


Ruthless in Purpose, Insidious in Method

by Kiertorata



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Case Fic, F/F, Humor, Infidelity, Motorcycles, Multi, Murder, Plot, Seduction, Smut, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 13:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14916062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiertorata/pseuds/Kiertorata
Summary: Ginny is a whisky-drinking, loud-mouthed, workaholic Auror who breaks womens' hearts and is obsessed with a certain master thief. Pansy is a bored housewife with a hidden agenda. A murder and a theft bring them together.





	1. Thursday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maraudersaffair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersaffair/gifts).



> Written for femmefest 2018. Thank you to U and lenapinewoods for the beta, and evening12 for the encouragement!

Ginny was up from her office chair before Auror Coote had finished shouting ‘Code Purple’. She grabbed her cloak and her wand and was the first to get to the Apparition station, panting slightly from her gazelle-like spring towards freedom.

She had been looking for an excuse to get out of the office all day. At this point, she would have been happy to save a Kneazle from a tree if it meant getting away from report writing. But Code Purple was better than a Kneazle. Code Purple was even better than interrogations, and Ginny loved yelling at people who deserved it. If she was lucky, Code Purple could mean...

“Where are we heading?” she asked Shacklebolt as he appeared next to her. The fact that Kingsley had made an appearance made her heart thump hopefully. The head of the Department didn’t leave his office for petty thefts.

“Poison Gallery, central London,” Auror Shacklebolt said in his low, rumbling voice. “There’s been another incident.”

He said it stoically, as if the news that one of the most-wanted criminals of the decade had just made an appearance didn’t affect him at all. Then again, Shacklebolt often resembled some sort of monk in his endless serenity and patience. Ginny let out a hiss of air and grabbed on tighter to her wand.

Not everyone’s reaction was so subdued.

“Yes! Emerald Rose strikes again!” Ritchie Coote said from her other side, fist pumping in a most unprofessional manner.

Even Dennis Creevey looked excited, dropping his scared mouse look for a moment to stand up straight, extending his wiry body.

Although Ginny felt similarly excited, she tried not to be so obvious about it. Firstly, Shacklebolt had been eyeing her in suspicion recently. He had already threatened to relocate her to the Department of Intoxicating Substances if she didn’t stop meddling with cases that weren’t hers. Intoxicating Substances mostly dealt with people like Mundungus Fletcher, the type of wizards one usually didn’t need a tracking spell to find because you could smell them from a street away. Ginny was determined not to be thrown off the case if it indeed was what she thought it was.

And based on the pace at which her collection of empty firewhisky bottles grew, Ginny wasn’t even sure they’d _allow_ her to work with Intoxicating Substances.

Secondly, no-one who was a true admirer of the work of Emerald Rose called him that. It was a ridiculous name, invented by the ever so glamour-seeking press.

Admirer was perhaps not an appropriate word when one was an Auror talking about a master thief.

“Where’s your partner?”

Ginny shrugged. Her idiot partner was probably in the coffee room, gossiping about his Ministry connections and running a hand through his tousled, manly hair. Ginny always lived in hope that someday McLaggen would forget to come to work and Kingsley would have to fire him, and Ginny wouldn’t have to be around his insufferable arse anymore.

Today didn’t seem to be the day, however.

“Ready and alert,” Cormac said, appearing at the Apparition station wearing a lazy smile. He gave Ginny a nod and ignored her scowl as he settled next to her.

Why she had been partnered up with McLaggen was beyond Ginny’s understanding. Usually they avoided pairing Gryffindors with each other at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. The combination was apparently volatile and irresponsible and “not good for anyone’s safety”. Then again, the department consisted primarily of Gryffindors, so they probably didn’t have a choice.

“Let’s get going,” Shacklebolt said, taking a single look at his team of Aurors. He Disapparated, leaving the air behind him crackling with energy.

The sound of her colleagues Disapparating filled the station. Ginny focused on her destination, and with a strange sense of thrill and premonition, followed suite.

***

She appeared inside an Apparition cube made of some dark, transparent material that made her think of muggle plastic. She slid the door open and entered the gallery hall where Kingsley and the rest of the Aurors awaited. The hall was equally modern in its minimalist layout; carefully placed glossy black elements decorated the white, spacious hall.

The Poison Gallery had been dividing the opinions of wizarding society recently with its provocative choices of art. Ginny knew it to be one of the rising art galleries in wizarding London. She was impatient to find out what had been taken.

Up until now, Emerald Rose had not discriminated with his choice of theft. Jewels, antique vases, precious jewellery and priceless paintings had all disappeared at the adept hands of the master criminal, but this would be the first time he had targeted a modern art gallery.

“We’re all in shock, obviously.”

Ginny at first hadn’t seen her behind her colleagues. A woman dressed in a smart black suit stood in the hall. She held her hands folded in front of her as she calmly addressed the group of Aurors. If she truly was in shock, she didn’t show it.

“Naturally, Miss...” Kingsley glanced at the black nametag pinned to the top of the woman’s blazer. “Carrow.”

“Hestia Carrow,” the woman introduced herself. She did not extend an arm.

Only at her introduction did Ginny recognize her as one of the Slytherin twins from Slug Club. She appeared to be less like a mousy girl than what she had been at school with her authoritative look and severe posture. The toneless voice and deadpan look were still the same, however. Ginny had always thought that Hestia and her sister were like vampires with their pale complexion and expressionless face.

“I Floo-called as soon as I discovered the body,” Ms Carrow said. “I sent Mr Baddock to secure the doors in case anyone was to attempt coming in.”

“Body? No-one mentioned a body,” Kingsley said, eyes narrowing just the slightest.

“It is a delicate matter,” Ms Carrow said with a sniff.

“We were called here on the grounds of a theft, Ms Carrow. I want to remind you that it is a crime to disrupt police investigation. As soon as we have examined the body, I want you to give us the full story.”

Carrow looked like she wanted to say something to protest, but instead held Auror Shacklebolt’s eyes in an unnervingly long stare.

“This way,” she finally said and turned on her heels. She led them into the passageway next to the receptionist’s counter. A man with a unibrow nodded at her and let them through the sliding doors. _Mr Baddock,_ Ginny gathered from a glance at the nametag on his guard’s uniform. The man’s eyes narrowed under Ginny’s gaze.

They couldn’t have missed it. The body lay in the middle of the ambiently lit, square room. A large roof tile covered most of it, jagged limbs sticking out from underneath. Ironically, it fit in well with the modern sculptures.

Next to the body lay a single, emerald-coloured rose.

Ginny let in a sharp hiss of breath. So, Emerald Rose had been here after all. Various theories began to run in her head as she took in the scene. Had the criminal used the ceiling to get into the gallery and had man crushed by the tile just been an unfortunate consequence of this? There was something oddly deliberate about the way the tile lay on top of the man.

“You were right to not touch the body after you found it,” Kingsley said to Carrow. “Who else was at the gallery when the body was discovered?”

“Just our morning guard, Mr Baddock. And the janitor, Wesley. I sent everyone out before I contacted the Auror Department.”

“And you said there had also been a theft?”

Carrow hesitated.

“Yes. One of the recent additions to our collection seems to be missing. A prized sculpture by the rising artist Damien Diaz. I cannot even begin to estimate the costs to our gallery of losing such a priceless piece. Mr. Malfoy will be very upset.”

For the first time since they had arrived, Ginny could sense some kind of feeling from the woman. She had not batted an eye at the crushed body, but having lost a valuable piece of art seemed to make her uneasy.

While Kingsley kept talking to Carrow and Dennis was sent to Floo the forensic team, Ginny crouched next to the body to study the heavy tile. Pictures would be taken, but she wanted to remember the exact position of the roof tile before it was removed. She glanced at the ceiling, where a hole gaped black. She would ask for the layout of the building later.

She took out her notebook. It was difficult to tell whether the tile was exactly under the hole. The tiles on the shining, black floor helped her estimate the position, but just in case, she sent a beam of light up from her wand to get the exact location. She did the same from each of the corners of the tile to the gallery walls, mumbling a measurement spell to get the distance.

She worked matter-of-factly around the dead man. The sticking limbs were a gruesome sight, but Ginny had long since stopped being sensitive around bodies.

“Taking notes again, Weasley?” McLaggen smirked, standing next to him.

“You should be glad one of us is,” Ginny said. She did not bother looking up from her work.

Cormac and she had a system. In order to work with each other without killing each other, they had had to form some ground rules. While most of those rules went unsaid, they were still in place.

Cormac usually handled people. While Ginny had no idea how anyone could find him even remotely charming, he seemed to have a knack for flattery and knew how to get people to spill things they hadn’t known they’d be willing to part with. For Ginny, it often meant holding down her vomit while watching him flirt with whoever they were questioning, but it also meant that Cormac knew to look away when Ginny was using less than questionable methods.

Out of the two, Ginny was used to being the one who took notes. She had never been particularly careful at school, often substituting instinct and action for planning and observation. But during her years as an Auror, she had come to rely more and more on meticulous notes.

She cast a final mass-calculation spell on the tile and noted the result. Arithmancy spells had never been her strength, but maybe she could get someone to calculate the expected trajectory of the tile to check if it could cause the amount of damage observed.

“Could this be the infamous Emerald Rose?” Ritchie Coote said, squatting down next to her. He ran a basic diagnostic spell on the body, checking for any signs of life.

Ginny looked at him, irritated. “As if a sculpture would still be missing if he was our criminal.”

Her partner was perhaps not the most pleasant person to be around, but at least he had a brain.

“He could have been an accomplice,” Coote said, unshaken by Ginny’s comment. His spell ended, the glowing red beam disappearing. “Definitely dead.”

“In that case we wouldn’t have a body. Do you think any criminal is stupid enough to leave the body of his accomplice behind?”

The fact that the body was there at all did however intrigue her. Even if the dead man was unrelated to the crime, why hadn’t Emerald Rose cleared away the body? Emerald Rose didn’t seem like the kind of criminal to make mistakes.

Ginny stepped aside as pictures were taken of the crime scene.

“Let’s have a look at him,” Kingsley said, and levitated the tile out of the way.

His limbs were distorted into odd angles. There had been no external bleeding, but the blood from his crushed body had began to gather as dark bruises, which must have meant that he was alive for some time after the tile had fallen on him. He must not have been a very powerful wizard if even such an emergency hadn’t activated his ability to levitate wandlessly.

His face, most of it shielded by one of his arms, looked eerily peaceful.

“I recognize him,” Cormac said. “That’s Fawley. Patrick Fawley, I believe.”

The name sounded like it should have rung a bell in Ginny, but it didn’t. She glanced at Ms Carrow. The woman’s face was expressionless, and she was staring at Cormac.

Cormac waited until everyone’s eyes were on him, and once he was sure he held the attention of his audience, he continued.

“He’s one of the two grandsons of the late ex-Minister Hector Fawley. The less successful one, I might add. Nothing really came of him, he is considered an odd eccentric by his family. His brother, on the other hand owns a successful consulting company and is involved in various other enterprises. My father is good friends with him, we had his family over for dinner a couple of times when I was young—”

“Irrelevant,” Shacklebolt interrupted him, and Ginny was happy to see Cormac shut his mouth. “His family shall be called to recognize the body. Auror Creevey, look up Patrick Fawley and find out everything you can about him. And have an owl sent to his family.”

“On it, Auror Shacklebolt,” Dennis said and left for the Apparition cube.

Ginny could imagine his bony fingers fondling the files in the Ministry archives.

“Auror Coote, stay with the body until the forensic team arrives. Ms Carrow, if I could ask you to come back into the hall for some questioning.”

Coote nodded. He glanced at the ceiling, and as if as an afterthought, performed a small Shield Charm over himself.

Ginny took one final look at the body and tried to instil it into her mind. The man’s robes, navy blue, expensive but well-worn. The brown leather shoes and matching wristwatch. The disturbingly peaceful look on his face.

Something about the scene bugged her, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. She shook her head and followed the other Aurors back into the reception.

“Take a seat, Ms Carrow,” Kingsley said. “This will take a while.”

He Accioed some chairs from behind the reception desk. Carrow hesitated and glanced at the gallery doors.

“I believe I need to contact Mr Malfoy to ask what is to be done about keeping the gallery open today,” she said.

“Auror McLaggen, contact Mr Malfoy,” Kingsley ordered. “Get him to come here. Now, Ms Carrow. What can you tell me about Patrick Fawley and his relationship to the gallery?”

“Patrick Fawley was an occasional visitor to the gallery,” Carrow began. “Mr Malfoy was under the habit of consulting him about pieces he was about to purchase.”

“Was Mr Fawley a paid consultant or would you say his relationship with Mr Malfoy was more friendly than professional?”

“I believe he paid Fawley for his services,” Carrow said, her lips narrowing to a tense line. “You will find it in the accounts, of course.”

“And who is in charge of bookkeeping?”

“Mr. Malfoy is, Auror.”

Kingsley held Carrow in a thoughtful gaze and didn’t say anything. Ginny wrote some lines into her notebook. It was an elementary questioning tactic, keeping silent in order to encourage the subject to talk. Carrow didn’t say anything more, however.

“Very well,” Kingsley finally said. “Did you recognize the body before the tile was lifted?”

“I avoided looking at the body,” Carrow said curtly.

“Not even to confirm that he was indeed dead? How did you know he was not still alive when you left to call the Aurors?”

Another questioning tactic, this time goading. Both Kingsley and Ginny knew that a man looking the way he did when they had found him must have been dead for a couple of hours. Ginny kept her eyes fixed on the woman, careful to read any signs of nervousness in her body language.

“He was completely motionless when I found him and his arms were twisted in an unnatural way. I thought he must be dead.”

“But you can’t deny the possibility that he was still alive?”

“I don’t know,” Carrow snapped. She took a moment to gather herself, breathing heavily. “I suppose I panicked, and just thought about calling the Aurors. I didn’t spend time examining him. But having seen the body now, I can confirm it was Mr Fawley.”

Kingsley nodded, appearing satisfied with her answer, but Ginny caught his eye in a sideways glance. She knew that they were thinking the same thing. If Carrow had indeed rushed out of the room the moment she had discovered the body, when had she noticed that a sculpture was missing? Surely one would look around before one’s thoughts immediately leapt to theft? And why had she reported it as theft when there was a grimmer issue that required attention?

“And the rose, is that the reason you thought it better to report theft rather than murder?”

“I… Yes. When I saw the rose I knew Emerald Rose must be behind whatever happened.”

Something about everything she had said didn’t add up, but Ginny wasn’t sure if it was just due to the nerves. People often reacted strangely under pressure.

Kingsley continued: “What did you do from last night until this morning when the body was discovered?”

“After work, I took the Portkey to Reading and had dinner with my sister and her husband. I travelled from the Portkey Station in Stockwell. I’m sure the Porter has my wand-signature,” Carrow said. Kinsley nodded at Ginny, who wrote it down. She would Floo the station to confirm it later. “I came back home around ten and read until about midnight before going to bed. In the morning, I came to work as usual at eight.”

“And can anyone prove that you were at home for the whole night as you claim to have been?”

“I live alone,” Carrow said, eyes narrowed. She folded her hands in front of her defensively.

Meanwhile, Cormac reappeared. “I’ve managed to contact Mr Malfoy’s personal secretary. Mr Malfoy will be over as soon as he gets out from a meeting. It shouldn’t take long.”

Ginny stifled a snort. It was typical Draco Malfoy to keep everyone waiting at a murder scene. She returned her attention to the interrogation.

“Tell me about the gallery, Ms. Carrow,” Kingsley said, unmoved by Carrow’s sour expression.

Carrow opened her mouth and began to explain in a toneless voice. “I run the gallery, sir. I am Head Director, in charge of curating the exhibitions. It is a small gallery, as you can see, consisting only of the exhibition space, reception and public facilities, an office and a storage space.”

“Who else is involved with the gallery?”

“I addition to me, there is only a Communications and Marketing Director who comes in twice a week, two guards and a janitor. And a receptionist who is due to come in quite soon,” Carrow said. She glanced somewhere behind them. “Speak of the devil. Miss Greengrass, will you introduce yourself?”

A woman stood at the gallery entrance. Her blonde hair was cut in an asymmetrical bob and she wore dark lipstick. Her black robes were of a modern, minimalistic cut. Her statement bag looked like it had cost a fortune. She stood frozen at the gallery entrance, eyeing the Aurors as if unsure whether to make her presence known.

Although she looked different from school days, Ginny recognized Daphne Greengrass as one of the friends of Pansy Parkinson. At school, their unbelievable conceit and loud mockery of everyone and everything had made them impossible not to notice.

What kind of ridiculous Slytherin club was the staff of the gallery? Nepotism was common in any circles, but in rich pureblood wizarding society it appeared to take an entirely new level.

“Your name?” Kingsley said.

“Daphne Greengrass,” the woman said, tilting her head to brush back a lock of sleek hair. She began to make her way towards the Aurors, the click of high heels echoing with each step. To Ginny’s eye, her strut looked over-confident, probably masking nervousness.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Sit down, Ms Greengrass,” Kingsley said. “You will want to be seated for this.”

Cormac, ever so obliging in the presence of a beautiful woman in need, summoned another chair from behind the counter. He held her eye and held onto the chair a moment longer than necessary as Daphne sat down. Daphne’s lips turned up slightly at the gesture.

“Well, what’s going on?” Daphne said, turning back to Shacklebolt.

“Please hand your wand to Auror McLaggen to be tested. We will ask you a few questions and hope for your cooperation.”

“I demand to know what’s happened before I answer anything,” Daphne said, narrowing her eyes slightly. She did not seem hostile like Carrow; more wary and somewhat curious.

“Ms Greengrass,” Kingsley said. “A murder took place in the gallery last night. We would like to know if you know anything about it.”

Ginny watched the colour drain from Daphne’s face. So, not everyone at this gallery was so emotionless at the event of a man dying in their workplace, she thought dryly.

“A m-murder?” Daphne said. She clutched harder onto her bag as if desperate for any support. Cormac leaned in closer to her. “Who’s dead?”

“Do you know a man called Patrick Fawley?” Kingsley asked.

“Fawley? I’m not sure I do… Am I supposed to know him?”

“You are the secretary of the gallery, are you not?” Kingsley said. “I would assume you know well when visitors of any importance visit the gallery.”

Daphne looked faint at this, and Ginny almost felt pity for her. But she didn’t trust Slytherins one bit. For all she knew, Greengrass could be bluffing. She was certainly doing a good job of ogling at Cormac every few moments.

“Fawley… Yes, I think there might have been a Fawley,” Daphne said. “He accompanied Mr Malfoy the times he visited. I can check my books, of course. All Mr Malfoy’s meetings should be there,” she said, ending with what Ginny took to be a hopeful glance at Shacklebolt.

“We will have a look at the books later, Ms Greengrass. Now tell me, what did you do between last night and this morning?”

“Why? Do you think I did it?” Daphne said, looking worried.

“No-one suspects you of anything,” Cormac said, quick to reassure. His voice had turned into the slick, sexy one Ginny found utterly sickening. “We are just trying to piece together all the events surrounding the gallery in the last few hours.”

Daphne gave him a little smile.

“I left early yesterday, I think around half-four. Ms Carrow can confirm this.” She glanced at Carrow, but the woman didn’t give so much as a nod. Daphne continued, looking a bit insecure. “I took a Portkey to Scotland to visit my sister. We went shopping in the wizarding parts of Edinburgh. Do you need to know exactly which shops we visited?”

“Auror McLaggen can note them down later. Continue.”

“We had dinner at a new place that just opened beside the Magnet, it was a fusion restaurant serving a blend of Indonesian and Jamaican cuisine—" She noticed Shacklebolt’s stern face and sobered. “I had a Portkey for the evening, but Astoria and I – she’s my sister – ended up going for drinks after dinner and it got so late that I ended up staying the night in her guest room.”

“And can anyone confirm that you were there the entire night?”

“I’m sure Astoria’s house-elf can confirm this. Besides, we got home pretty late. What time did you say the murder occurred?”

Kingsley didn’t say anything. One of the forensic Aurors had appeared and murmured something to him in a low voice. Kingsley nodded at him.

“Aurors Weasley and McLaggen, continue with the questioning,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

He went with the forensic investigator and left Ginny and Cormac alone to deal with Carrow and Greengrass.

Ginny turned to Daphne again. “Would there be a way to break in to the gallery? If you had to suggest a way, what would it be?”

“Excuse me, if I may interrupt,” Carrow said. All eyes turned to her as she said in her toneless voice: “Mr Malfoy is the owner of a security systems company and always makes sure that the security measures around the gallery are up to date. The gallery is impossible to break into.”

Ginny was quick to react.

“So, you would say it had to be an inside job?” Her eyes narrowed at Carrow.

“Impossible,” Carrow said coolly. “The wards can only be manipulated by Mr Malfoy himself. Not even I have the authority to open the gallery for the day. Mr Malfoy does this manually every morning by adjusting the wards from his home.”

Her countenance became even more hostile than it had been before. Ginny was starting to suspect that Carrow was a woman who took her job very seriously. She didn’t seem too pleased to have to admit that her boss didn’t trust her with the wards.

The Apparition Cube crackled and loud popping sounds were followed by the appearance of two figures.

“So, what’s this business about a murder in my gallery?” said a familiar, obnoxious drawl that Ginny hadn’t heard since school days.

His extravagant robes fluttered behind him and his stylish boots clicked on the black floor. Draco Malfoy certainly knew how to make an entrance.

He was closely trailed by one of the hunks that had used to follow him around at Hogwarts: Goyle, if Ginny remembered correctly. By the looks of it, his status had since then been updated to official bodyguard. He looked like a grim gorilla towering Malfoy in pitch black robes.

“Please tell me Mr McLaggen didn’t pull me out of my meeting for nothing,” Malfoy said. He summoned a chair and sat next to Daphne, crossing his arms in front of him. He stared at them demandingly, and to Ginny he looked like a cross between a person of authority and petulant child. Goyle didn’t sit down.

They briefed them on the case. Malfoy appeared to be listening, occasionally sneering at their words.

“What is your relation to Patrick Fawley, Mr Malfoy?” Cormac asked.

“I used to consult him sometimes. Poor man,” Malfoy said. Nothing in his face looked like he was sorry for the death of the man in question.

“So an employee then?”

“No, he was a freelancer,” Malfoy said. His slouch in the chair deepened. In Ginny’s opinion, he was far too comfortable in front of them, considering that he was the main suspect of a murder case.

“Who owns the property, Mr Malfoy?” Ginny asked.

“I do, of course,” Malfoy said, leaning back on his chair. “Will this take much longer? I’m rather busy with other things.”

“Mr Malfoy,” Ginny said, barely able to hide her frustration. “You don’t seem to comprehend the severity of the situation. A man has been murdered.”

“I don’t understand what the issue is. I’m sure Fawley was there to steal the sculpture, died when a roof tile fell on him and someone else saw the opportunity. Case closed.”

Ginny wanted to scream at his indifference. She had forgotten how completely annoying Malfoy could be. It seemed that age had only brought with it a stronger sense of entitlement.

“I suppose this will be all over the news, then?” Malfoy said. He gave a dramatic sigh, looking at his nails. “I will have to owl Rita Skeeter and try to get her to turn this disaster into a success.”

As if to confirm Malfoy’s words, Auror Coote appeared. “Aurors, members of the press are waiting outside the doors. I don’t know how they could have heard about what happened already, but they seem to know that there’s been a murder. Should I let them in?”

Shit. Ginny glanced behind her shoulder; the dark glass didn’t allow her to see details, but she could indeed spot a restless mob outside the gallery. She immediately suspected that Malfoy must have tipped them off before arriving. She had no doubts that he was the kind of person to use any opportunity to gain publicity. He seemed to have a sense for scandal and an even greater sense for business.

“No, let’s wait for Auror Shacklebolt to—” she said.

“Let them in,” Malfoy interrupted. “We can’t deprive the press of their story, can we?”

He flicked his wand and the great doors opened before Ginny had time to react. The crown started piling in, shouting questions at them and flashing their cameras.

“Auror Weasley, is it true that a murder occured at Poison Gallery last night?” a journalist said, shoving a Sonorus-spelled wand in her face.

“Is it true that an emerald rose was found at the crime scene?” another one shouted.

“Mr Malfoy, can you comment on the object that was stolen?” Ginny heard a journalist say.

“Coote! Ward off the gallery section! Quick!” Ginny yelled. To the mob, she said, “No comment. We will publish an official statement later.” But no-one seemed to register her words. The hall was completely taken over by chaos, and Ginny could barely see Cormac, Malfoy and the others through the crowd of people.

She could hear Malfoy spouting ridiculous nonsense in an amused voice. “I am devastated over what has happened, naturally. The loss of a priceless sculpture is nothing compared to the loss of a great man and good friend.”

A camera flashed several times somewhere in the crowd, reflecting off Malfoy’s silvery-blond hair.

“Wait! My left side is my handsomer side. _Now_ you may take my picture.”

Kingsley pushed his way through the crowd. Ginny saw a flash of annoyance pass his face; but it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

“Get rid of the crowd as soon as possible,” he said to Ginny. And louder, to the mob: “The Auror Department refrains from commenting on the case as of now. Look for an official statement tomorrow.”

His booming voice seemed to hold some authority, because some of the journalists backed off, leaving a clearing in the middle. Maybe they hoped for him to say something about the case despite what he had just said.

“Mr Malfoy,” Kingsley said, turning to Malfoy. His eyes narrowed just slightly at the man. “I trust that you will cooperate with my Aurors.”

“Of course. I’m the very picture of cooperation,” Malfoy said, sneering sweetly at Shacklebolt.

“And Ms Carrow,” Kingsley said, “please memo the rest of your staff that they will be questioned duly, as soon as the press has been dealt with.”

Carrow nodded numbly. She seemed out of her element with the crowd in the hall. Kingsley turned to Ginny and Cormac.

“And Aurors Weasley and McLaggen?” Kingsley said, capturing them in a stern look.

Ginny held her breath.

“The case is yours. You may call Aurors Coote and Creevey in case you need support. The Lab and Archives are at your disposal. Keep me updated.”

***

A single light shone from the kitchen window. It probably meant that Tonks was awake and had gotten Teddy to sleep on time for once.

Ginny opened the creaking gate and pushed past the overgrown rhododendron in the small yard. She walked past the motorcycle; it’s metal surfaces glistened among the plants and the rubbish in the yard. When he had left England after the war with Madam Maxime, Hagrid had given Sirius’s old motorcycle to Tonks.

It had taken a while to get the press to leave the gallery. After Kingsley and the other Aurors had left, she had spent a few frustrating hours interrogating Draco Malfoy and the rest of the Poison Gallery staff with Cormac.

The staff had been participative enough, but she hadn’t gotten much out of them. One of the guards and the janitor had had sound alibis for the night. The night guard claimed to have stood at his post at the front door all night without seeing anything, and for the night to have been uneventful.

Ginny had made sure to let them know exactly what refusing to cooperate with the Aurors would result in. But not even her best intimidation voice and the strategic positioning of her wand towards the subjects' more _vulnerable areas_ had gotten them to talk. She had concluded that either they were extensively good bluffers or they really did not know anything.

She had gotten even less out of Draco Malfoy. After the journalists had left, he had kept talking nonsense about Ministry politics with Cormac as if he didn’t take the situation seriously.

There had been something false about his relaxedness, and Ginny was determined to figure out just what he was hiding. Luckily after listening to enough of his airy comments and snide retorts she had managed to pester him into a meeting at the Malfoy Manor the next day.

Ginny pointed her wand at the front door to modify the wards to let her in. Many would have considered the wards a bit extreme, but as an Auror she had made her fair share of enemies.

Once inside, she threw her Auror robes onto the pile of clothing on the dresser and wandered into the living room.

“Hey.”

Tonks was in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea. She looked up when Ginny appeared, pushing away the newspaper she had been reading. Her faded pink hair stuck out in odd angles and she looked tired.

“How was your day?” she said.

“Long,” Ginny said, slumping onto the worn sofa. “I’m knackered. What a fucking day.”

She spelled the light in the corner on, and the dim yellow radiance exposed the room and its cosy earth-toned colours. It was mostly full of Tonks’s things: the scratched wooden coffee table with its stacks of mugs and dirty plates, the muggle TV that Ginny still hadn’t learned to use and Teddy’s toys that were scattered on the floor. Only the vintage Quidditch posters were Ginny’s; they were the only thing she had bothered to set out when she had moved into her new home two weeks ago.

“Cho was over,” Tonks’s voice said from the kitchen.

“Fuck,” Ginny said. “I forgot to tell her I’d be home late.”

Her heart plummeted. She knew that if Cho knew she had forgotten to even think about her, she would never let her hear the end of it.

During their relationship Cho had always been upset about Ginny putting her job first. They had had numerous fights about Ginny’s lack of commitment, one of those resulting in one of the biggest mistakes of Ginny’s life: moving in together with Cho.

Which, consequently, had resulted in her now being without a house.

“She said she was here to get the rest of her stuff. I don’t know what’s hers and I didn’t want to go into your room, so I told her to owl you,” Tonks said.

“Shit. Was she pissed at me?”

“I believe ‘selfish cunt’ was the phrase she used.”

Ginny groaned, sinking further into the sofa.

Cho and she had started a year ago when she had still been playing amateur Quidditch as a hobby. Ginny had sort of been fucking Mandy, another team member, at the time, but the reconnection with Cho had turned a school-time rivalry into a full-fledged romance.

The sex had been good. The Quidditch had been fantastic. But over time, Cho’s demands for affection and stability had clashed too much with Ginny’s need for independence.

She was still dealing with the aftermath.

“Tea?” Tonks said.

“I could do with something stronger tonight.”

Tonks’s gaze on her was a little bit too long, but she didn’t say anything. She summoned two cans of beer from the fridge silently. Ginny gave a contented sigh when her can gave a little hiss.

“How was your day?” Ginny asked, taking a sip.

“Oh, the same old. Teddy threw a tantrum at Diagon Alley when I was trying to buy him robes,” Tonks said. “Oh, and Remus bailed on me when we were supposed to go visit Teddy’s future nursery together.”

The way she said it accompanied with a hollow laugh wasn’t a good sign.

“Maybe he forgot,” Ginny said with as much tact as she could.

Tonks shrugged and didn’t look at her. It was upsetting to see the worn face and slouched posture. Tonks’s emotions had always been apparent in her appearance and recently the pink in her hair had been fading rapidly.

The break-up from Remus had definitely taken a toll on her, and her professional life wasn’t much better. Because she could only work part-time, they had moved her to one of the less exciting sub-Departments. The Department of Magical Transportation had her spend most of her time performing safety checks on broomsticks and fining for unregistered Portkeys.

“So, a new case at work?” Tonks said. “Big one?”

“Massive,” Ginny said. She remembered the group of journalists that had crowded the gallery hall and continued dryly. “I suspect you’ll be reading all about it in the papers tomorrow morning.”

Ginny hoped Cormac hadn’t said anything stupid to the press. She had no faith in her partner’s ability to behave when cameras were involved. The man had an ego that rivaled with Malfoy’s.

Tonks looked at her like she wanted to ask more but Ginny didn’t feel like sharing yet. She still wanted to work out her thoughts on the case before making any statements.

“Oh, before I forget, could you look after Teddy on Wednesday evening?” Tonks said. “I was asked to do an extra shift in the office. Seems like dear old Mrs Taylor wants to be far away again when that order of muggle litter that’s to be transformed into Portkeys arrives.”

“Oh, is it that time of the month again?” Ginny said. “Mrs Taylor seems to always know well in advance when she’s going to have a migraine.”

This time Tonks actually smiled. “That she does. She doesn’t always seem to remember that other people work there as well. It’s been hectic enough at work now that the Department is undergoing renovation.”

She got up, brushing off some crumbs off her faded Weird Sisters t-shirt.

“I’m off to bed. Please get that girl of yours to calm down before she decides to throw a hex at our house.”

“That’s why I warded the house,” Ginny said, pleased when Tonks laughed. “And she’s no longer my girl. I think she might want to kill me.”

“The more of a reason for you to get her sorted out. Good night.”

“’Night.”

Ginny finished her beer and wandered into the kitchen. She put the kettle on and pulled some jars out of the fridge. She hadn’t eaten anything since morning, and the beer had started to go to her head, making her thoughts slightly fuzzy.

She thought about the case as she piled mayonnaise, pickles and cheese onto a sandwich. She still had plenty to do even though it was late. With a flick of her wand, she sent the food and a cup of tea flying into her room. As an afterthought, she poured herself some firewhisky from the bottle she kept behind the biscuit tin.

The reports from the forensic team had arrived just before she had left to go home, and she spread them out on her desk. There was barely anything new in them; she had talked to the lead forensic expert at the crime scene and gotten most of the information she needed from her.

Autopsy had placed the time of death at three in the morning. None of their current suspects had a solid alibi for that moment except Daphne Greengrass, who had been seen by her sister’s house-elf on the way to the loo.

Ginny took out the other document she had managed to procure during the day. With some heavy persuasion, she had managed to get Carrow to give her the blueprints to the gallery building. She spread them out on her desk and frowned as she went through them.

They were very technical, full of symbols Ginny did not understand, but from spotting the entrance she could make out where everything else was. She cast a zooming spell on the ceiling, determined to find out if there was any possibility Emerald Rose had entered through there.

The blueprints revealed a narrow gap between the ceiling and the roof. Narrow, but wide enough for a small person to crawl through. It looked like something that might not be known even to people who worked in the building.

Even if Emerald Rose had somehow arrived through the roof, it still didn’t explain the whole deal with Fawley.

Could it just have been a coincidence? Could the thief just happened to have entered through the ceiling and sent the heavy tile on top of the other man by accident? And in that case, what had Fawley been doing there and how had he gotten in?

The whole theory was so ludicrous that Ginny had to lean towards the other option: murder.

Emerald Rose was known for his sense of style and theatrics. He chose glamorous locations for his thefts, and hell, he left a rose at every crime scene. Publicity was clearly something he sought after.

But a murder was a big statement even for Emerald Rose.

Ginny took out the final piece to the puzzle that she had managed to procure that day. In a small bag, preserved under a humidity spell, was a single petal of the rose they had found at the crime scene. Ginny had managed to snatch it when she had been investigating the body; evidence normally went through the forensic team before she could get her hands on it and it slowed down her work.

She didn’t know what she would do with it yet, but it felt safer to have it in her possession than to endure office bureaucracy later to obtain it.

Ginny pointed her wand at the wall in front of her and muttered the keyword she had set for the spell. The empty wall with its old floral wallpaper swirled in front of her eyes and stopped to reveal a notice board. The board was filled to the brim with notes, newspaper clippings and documents.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Tonks; Tonks was another Auror and one of the best people she knew. She just didn’t feel comfortable sharing just how involved she was in this case.

She supposed it was in the family. Ron had his undying passion towards the Chudley Cannons. Percy had his cauldron bottoms and Charlie had his dragons (and now, his Harry). Fred and George had had their experiments and her father had his muggle artefacts.

Ginny had Emerald Rose.

She had created the spell in order to hide the information she had been collecting for months.

She pinned the blueprints and the forensic report to the already overflowing board and took a moment to appreciate her work. Before she knew it, her tea had grown cold beside her and the glass of whisky had emptied.

There were no photographs of the thief. At some point, the press had started to go wild with their speculations and some sketches of him had started to appear over various tabloids.

The most recent one Ginny had seen was a detailed drawing of an aristocratic man. Whiskers waxed and curled, a top hat on his head and a monocle on his eye, the figure had held and emerald rose between his charming lips. Next to the image had been a headline that had made Ginny want to cringe: “Mister Rose – the mysterious bachelor stealing the heart of every woman in Britain.”

It was of course based on nothing but the press’s never-ending thirst for glamour. No-one even knew the gender of the mysterious thief, although Ginny suspected him to be male.

“It must be a woman,” Michael Corner had said in his typical sexist way when they had first found a rose at the crime scene. “A man wouldn’t leave flowers.”

Michael Corner was another unfortunate person Ginny had the misfortune to share a work environment with. What with their common history, Michael thought he had the right to give Ginny smug looks whenever he saw her. That combined with the misogynistic shit he spouted half of the time made him one of the most irritating people Ginny knew.

Ginny’s biggest regret was ever letting Michael use his fingers on her in fifth year. Her only consolation was that she hadn’t returned the favour.

Several people in the Department were resolved to catch the master thief, including Michael. But none of them had Ginny’s dedication. If there was someone who would catch the thief, it was her.

Before she went to bed, she still needed to write some letters. Stifling a yawn, she pulled out some parchment and a quill. After she had sent the letters, she climbed to bed, ready to pass out from tiredness.

It was just moments before she was about to fall asleep that she realized what had bothered her about the crime scene.

The wand.

When found dead on the gallery floor, Patrick Fawley had had no wand.


	2. Friday

She got up early the next day and left the house before Tonks and Teddy were up. Her stomach rumbled at the lack of breakfast; she would have to grab something quick to eat from the Ministry canteen. If her mother had known how often she resorted to snacks from the canteen vending machines, she would have given Ginny more than a piece of her mind.

Ginny ran up the flights of stairs into the Auror Department two steps at once, not bothering with the packed elevators. Her partner was not there, but then again Cormac never made an appearance before nine. He had probably been with some woman or other last night. She remembered the way Daphne Greengrass had blushed when Cormac had gone to her aid and wondered if that was the reason he was late this morning.

She fetched herself a strong tea and slipped into the Archives Room. She wanted to do some groundwork before the meeting with Malfoy later that morning. The archivist at the front desk gave her a frown of disapproval at the sight of her tea cup but let her pass when Ginny gave her an apologetic smile.

She spent the next hour buried in newspaper clippings and various files on the Malfoys.

Lucius Malfoy had gone to Azkaban for his involvement with You-Know-Who and died not long after. Narcissa Malfoy had never found her place among the elite wizards of England again and had retreated to a holiday estate in France.

Draco Malfoy, apparently, had kept busy.

University records, newspaper clippings, accounts from his various business endeavours. After the war, Malfoy had seemed to have been everywhere. He had studied Charms for a year and dropped out. He had started companies, some failures and some successful. Currently he was the owner at least ten different enterprises, including an architecture studio, a construction company, a security systems company, two art galleries and an antique furniture store. Admirable at the age of twenty-four.

Despite his controversial decisions during the war, his reputation had come out of the mess mostly unscathed. The press seemed to enjoy depicting him as the Troubled Bad Boy Who Had Been Good All Along. Ginny suspected his massive fortune had had something to do with it.

She also found a clipping from the Malfoy wedding.

She stared at Pansy Parkinson’s pug nose and lipstick-tinted smirk. There had always been something smug about her smile. The article showcased a picture of them beaming in front of a cake that was taller than five-year-old Teddy, along with a few lines about the wedding. Another picture showed Malfoy twirling Pansy around on the dancefloor, her layers of dazzling white frill swaying with the movement.

Funny. Out of all the scenarios Ginny could have imagined for Pansy Parkinson, she had never imagined her becoming Malfoy’s wife.

Ginny stared at the photograph as she walked over to the archivist to have the material she picked out copied.

When she entered her office with the files tucked under her arm, her post was waiting for her.

_  
Ginny,_

_I received your owl. I’m busy as always, but I will have a look at your problem if you think I can help. Drop by my house tonight if you are free._

_Love,  
Hermione_

_P.S. Please stop owling me at work, owl droppings around the office are a real nuisance.  
_

Ginny grinned. She had done right to owl Hermione at her workplace at the Centre of Theoretical and Experimental Arithmancy. She doubted Hermione had gone home last night; she seemed to be even more married to her job than Ginny, often forgetting she had a home at all.

There was another letter on her desk, this one in official Ministry stationary. Ginny scanned it over and her smile had twisted into a satisfied smirk by the time she had reached the end. It appeared that someone else had been through the Ministry Archives as well. What they had discovered was very useful indeed. She tucked the letter away and glanced at her watch. It was time to leave.

***

“What a bloody mess,” Draco Malfoy said.

He greeted them at the front doors of the Manor, leaning against the doorframe in his usual, carefree manner. His lips were turned into a lazy smile, but Ginny spotted dark rings under his eyes that he had not managed to hide with a glamour charm. Perhaps he was not as indifferent to what had happened in his gallery as he tried to appear.

He led them into the parlour and asked them to take a seat.

Sitting in the parlour was Pansy Parkinson—no, _Pansy Malfoy_ , Ginny corrected herself. She was perched on an antique chaise longue reading a magazine and looked up when they entered the room. She smirked when she saw who the arrivals were.

“Hello, Auror Weasley.”

“Mrs. Malfoy,” Ginny said.

Dark eyes bored into hers, glistening in an almost tantalizing way. They had barely talked at Hogwarts, yet Ginny felt a strange shudder of remembrance pass through her.

“Do call me Pansy,” Pansy said.

Ginny glanced at the magazine. It was a wizarding tabloid, one of the trashy ones that Ginny knew only from Katie always bringing them into the Department break room. On the cover of it in big, flashing letters read, “EMERALD ROSE STRIKES AGAIN. Master thief _and_ murderer? Mystery at the Poison Gallery!”

Pansy merely raised an eyebrow at Ginny’s look. Ginny’s eyes moved from the tabloid to the coffee table. Sitting in a vase that was probably more expensive than all of Ginny’s property was a perfect bouquet of emerald-coloured roses.

Her heart almost skipped a beat.

“A tribute to our criminal,” Pansy said, smirking as she saw where Ginny’s eyes had landed. “Of course, I wouldn’t have placed them there if I had known what a bother he would be to Draco and me. But now that they are there, I can’t get myself to throw them away.”

They were beautiful, glistening slightly as if covered with morning mist. Of course, they had probably been magically treated to keep them as vibrant and fresh as when they were cut.

Ginny and Cormac sat on a satin loveseat across Malfoy. Cormac spread his long legs out, clearly enjoying the luxurious satin seat. Ginny sat stiffly at the edge. She was here for business.

“Mr Malfoy,” Ginny started. “We have a few matters to discuss that we didn’t have time for yesterday, as you were so _very busy_ last night. Actually, I’m glad you postponed. I received some additional information from inside the Department this morning that I would like to hear your comments on.”

She glanced at Pansy, unsure whether to continue.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Pansy said and returned to her magazine.

“Darling,” Malfoy said. There was something tense about his voice. “Could you serve the good Aurors some tea?”

“Of course, my dear,” Pansy said melodically.

As she got up, a lock of black, silky hair escaped from behind her ear. Her hair was still cut in the same stylish bob as during school days. It suited her, Ginny thought, but it was nevertheless strange that she had never changed it. Pansy rather seemed the kind of person to put a lot thought into her appearance. It was impractical too; Ginny observed Pansy brush the escaped hair away with a thoughtless air. She wondered if Malfoy had to hold it back every time she sucked him off.

The vision of Pansy’s mouth on Malfoy’s cock, her full lips engulfing the pasty shaft, made Ginny want to shudder. She pushed back the image.

“Tea, Aurors?”

Cormac earnestly agreed and Ginny nodded stiffly. She expected Pansy to call a house-elf to serve them, but instead Pansy turned around in a swift movement, her hips swaying as she left the room. Ginny heard the fading sound of her heels clicking on the marble floor. She forced her brain to focus on the matter at hand.

“Mr Malfoy. We need all your business accounts for examination,” Ginny said. “Studying Fawley’s accounts has revealed several large payments from your Gallery.”

“I told you yesterday, I used to consult Fawley on art-related matters,” Malfoy said, sounding carefully bored. He twirled a golden pocket watch in his fingers. Ginny had noticed the same habit at the gallery the day before. She wondered if it was a nervous habit.

“Our study also revealed several substantial payments that were unaccounted for. We do not have a reason to believe that you have anything to do with this, but as we were so unfortunate as to find him lying dead on _your_ premises, I would like to think you have no objections to us making sure.”

If it was possible for the already pasty Malfoy to pale even further, he did. For a moment, he looked like he was fighting an internal struggle, the small smile on his lips clashing with the coldness of his eyes. Finally, he spoke.

“Of course. I’ll have my secretary fetch them for you.”

He snapped his fingers and a house-elf appeared. He muttered some commands to the elf and it disappeared with a pop.

“Better to be safe than sorry, isn’t that right?” Ginny said. “As you said, your accounts should all be in order, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

She gave Malfoy a cheerful grin and watched him poorly hide a sneer.

They asked him some more questions while waiting for tea. Ginny let Cormac do the talking, freeing herself to take notes. His half-flattering, half-boastful style of conversation had a way of encouraging those with enough of a sense of vanity to talk. Soon enough, Cormac had managed to engage Draco in casual chit-chat about his businesses.

Pansy returned levitating a tray of tea accessories. It was decked to the brim with scones, cakes and porcelain cups with kitchy rose-patterns, but Ginny barely noticed. She couldn’t keep her eyes off _her_.

It was more apparent now that she stood facing her that Pansy had curves that could drive a woman mad.

“How’s the detective work coming along? Are you done questioning my poor husband?” Pansy said. She wore that same mysterious smile that was somehow simultaneously sugary sweet and smug.

A pureblood housewife probably did not have anything better to do with her time than follow the latest gossip. It was probably the reason she kept looking at Ginny like she wanted to devour her. After all, Ginny (and Cormac, although Ginny rather considered him a sidekick) was in charge of the hottest case of the decade.

“Pansy,” she said. “Your husband here claims to have been in bed all night the night of the crime. You do share a bed, don’t you? We were wondering if you could confirm that he didn’t leave it.”

“Yes, we share a bed,” Pansy said. “And I can confirm that Draco went to sleep at the same time as me and got up around six in the morning.”

Ginny didn’t miss the significant glance that passed between Pansy and Malfoy.

Pansy’s presence changed the atmosphere in the room. They switched from talking about the case to discussing trivial things, and Ginny had no interest in the conversation. She paced the room holding her cup, stopping by the window to look at the grounds. She hoped Malfoy’s secretary would be in soon. She didn’t have time to sip tea at Malfoy Manor making small talk; she had work to do. 

“Feel free to use the pitch and the gym during your investigation,” she heard Malfoy say.

Malfoy addressed the invitation to Cormac, but Ginny was quick to accept.

“Thank you, Mr. Malfoy,” she said. “I think I will.”

So this was how things were handled in rich pureblood society. Next he would be passing Galleons under the table. She huffed as she placed her empty cup onto the tray. And as a further act of demonstration, she grabbed a chocolate eclair and shoved it into her mouth in one go.

If she heard a small snort from the corner where Pansy sat, she ignored it.

Malfoy’s secretary entered the room. He wore a stylish grey suit and was levitating several heavy-looking folders in front of him. It took Ginny a moment to register just who he was.

The Zabinis were as rich as the Malfoys and their reputation had suffered even less as a result of the war. Why Blaise Zabini had chosen to act as secretary to Malfoy when he clearly had all the options in the world made no sense to Ginny.

Then again, for some reason, Malfoy had always had his little court of loyal followers. Perhaps some people just found a pointy face and theatrical whining appealing.

“Thanks, Blaise,” Malfoy said, grabbing the folders. Zabini retreated from the room. Malfoy shrunk the folders and slid them into a single, small file.

“There. Thrilled to find that I’m cooperating, Auror Weasley?” he said. “You could try a thank you. If your mother taught you any manners.”

Ginny merely glared at him and grabbed the file.

At the front gates of the Manor Cormac turned to her and said, “Give me that. You know neither of us is qualified to check through financial accounts. I have a man who can do the job for us.”

Ginny had thought of asking Percy – her brother probably got off on triple-checking each decimal – but it didn’t matter. She passed the file to Cormac. It was one thing less for her to worry about.

“Bye, Weasley.”

“Bye, McLaggen,” Ginny said. “Meeting still on tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Cormac said, looking at her in shock.

“Which is a perfectly normal workday for Aurors, although why am I not surprised that you didn’t know that...”

She waited until her partner had Disapparated and turned back in through the gates. She hoped Malfoy wasn’t too particular about the wards on the Manor grounds. If he was, she would just say that she was checking out the Quidditch pitch.

When she had walked past the right corner of the Manor and into the side of the grounds facing the parlour, she spotted what they had been looking for. Amidst the rhododendrons and lush peonies were rose bushes. And between the roses of various shades of red and pink was one bush that stood out: one of emerald-green roses.

She looked around, making sure that no-one was observing her from the parlour window, and brought her wand to the bush. She cut off a stem, shrunk it and put it in her pocket.

Her idea was completely far-fetched; no-one in their right mind would plant evidence so literally near them. But she had to make sure. She scribbled a note to Neville and stuffed it in her pocket, reminding herself to owl it when she got back to the office.

***

“How tall did you say this man was?” Hermione asked.

“Five foot six,” Ginny said.

“And you said his head wasn’t crushed by the tile?”

Ginny nodded. They were in her old room pouring over the photographs and notes Ginny had brought over about the crime. She and Hermione had used to share a flat after Hogwarts. It had been a good solution for about a couple of months, until Ron and Hermione’s constant fighting had made the place unbearable to live in.

“So, what do you think?” Ginny said.

“I can’t know just by looking at it. It’s not an easy problem, there are a lot of factors to consider. But I think that with some complex Calculus spells, I should be able to figure out whether the situation you described is plausible or not,” Hermione said. She twirled the end of her wand in her fingers thoughtfully.

Little by little, Hermione’s things had started to take over Ginny’s old room. Currently it looked like something between a library and a garbage dump. Gone were the days when Hermione had color-coded her notes and taken pride in a flawless filing system. To the observer, the house was in utter chaos, with books, files and rolls of parchment taking up every possible surface.

“Help yourself to tea or coffee,” Hermione said. She barely paid any attention to Ginny anymore. Her brow scrunched up and disappeared behind her hair as she went into thinking mode.

“This cup looks like it’s been here for a week,” Ginny said, peering into a blue patterned teacup that was half-full of thick, brown liquid.

Hermione took the cup and performed an absent-minded heating spell on it. Ginny watched in horror as she took a gulp from it before starting her calculations.

Ginny knew she wasn’t needed anymore and wandered out of the room to wait for Hermione to finish. She cleared her way through the stacks of books into the kitchen, and glanced at a pile of magazines on the kitchen table: _Arithmancy Weekly: the Magical Topology of Manifolds_. Ginny shook her head; it’s not like she had really hoped to find a paper with a Quidditch section in this house. She put the kettle on and took a sniff at the milk in the fridge. A sour stench hit her nose and she poured the remaining grainy liquid down the drain.

She decided to make herself useful and set a few cleaning spells in motion before activating the Floo network.

When Hermione wandered into the living room, Ginny clambered out of the fireplace holding a bag of groceries.

“I brought you things,” Ginny said.

“Oh, thanks,” Hermione said, brightening. “Look, I figured out your problem.”

She levitated a stack of papers out of the way and laid the parchment she had been working on onto the coffee table. Ginny placed the bag of groceries on the floor and crouched to look at what Hermione had worked on.

“It is possible that the victim was killed by the ceiling tile, but it’s very unlikely. I would say the chances are as low as five percent that that is the case.”

Ginny looked at the notes, barely understanding anything. Although Hermione’s handwriting was as impeccable as ever and she had clearly put effort into the presentation, Ginny’s knowledge of Arithmancy was close to nothing. She nodded in fake contemplation as Hermione talked her through the calculations.

“I’ll take your word on it,” she said when Hermione had finished.

“You can keep the notes if you need them for your case. They should make sense to someone with an Arithmancy background,” Hermione said.

“Thanks,” Ginny said and shrunk the notes to put them in her coat. And before she turned back to the Floo to leave, she said, “Hermione? I know I sound like my mother, but try to eat a warm meal and sleep at home sometimes, alright? There’s more to life than Arithmancy.”

***

She had been right. Any sort of accident was most definitely ruled out at this point. Even murder was more complicated than she had originally thought.

A note from Auror Creevey was waiting for her back in the office. Apparently, the Investigative Team had done a search through Fawley’s house and found his wand. It had been in an ornamental vase next to the front door, which seemed to have been one of the places he kept it when he was going out and didn’t need it. Another similar vase had been next to a jar of Floo Powder on the mantle.

She had started to suspect that whoever had been in the gallery had known Fawley personally, or had at least known him well enough to Polyjuice themselves into someone he trusted.

Ginny glanced at the clock. It was past eight; she hadn’t seen Teddy in a couple of days, and it would be nice to go to bed before midnight for once.

Something about the questioning at Malfoy Manor bothered her, however. On impulse, she scribbled a note to Shacklebolt, hoping he would be in the next morning to read it. She knew the Head of the Department didn’t like to be bothered about trivial things, but she needed his permission if she was going to check up on something she didn’t find entirely convincing.  
Finally, with a stifled yawn, she grabbed her robes and spelled the lights shut in her office to go home.

***

Someone was waiting for her at the front steps of Tonks’s house. Her black hair shined in the yellow-white light of the street lamp.

The first thing Ginny noticed about Cho was that she was wearing lipstick. It was a soft pink and it complimented her skin-tone. She had rarely worn any make-up during their relationship and it was odd, but it suited her.

“Hey,” Cho said.

“Hey,” Ginny said. She stopped a few feet away from her. “How are you?”

The last time they had seen each other, Ginny had furiously levitated what belongings she could into makeshift boxes and bags she had transfigured out of old takeout boxes. Cho had stood in the doorway, crying. They had tried to talk it out one more time, but that had just resulted in another row, and Ginny had stormed out and ended up in George’s flat in Diagon Alley.

The next day she had gone to work more hungover than ever.

“I’m alright,” Cho said. “Busy. Season’s about to end. We’re in the semifinals so there’s been a lot of training.”

“How’s the team?” Ginny asked. She kept her voice carefully neutral. She didn’t know how to be around this new Cho yet. Small talk, albeit awkward, felt like her best bet.

“Good. Marlowe’s been kicking our arses at practice, as always.”

Ginny allowed her lip to quirk a bit at the statement. Marlowe had been famously relentless during Ginny’s whole time on the team.

“And how are you? How’s work?” Cho asked. Ginny thought she imagined a tenseness to the questions.

“Work’s good. Giving speed tickets to dangerous flyers, catching evil wizards, the usual,” she tried more playfully, but Cho didn’t smile.

Something about the situation felt completely stupid: this was the woman she had shared her breakfasts with for the last eight months. The woman with whom she had gone on long broomstick flights and laughed at stories from her childhood, and the woman she had shared more orgasms with than she could count.

But Ginny supposed that awkwardness was an unavoidable part of a break-up.

“I’ll get your stuff. Come in, if you want,” she finally said when Cho didn’t say anything. “Tonks is probably inside with Teddy, but I don’t think she’ll mind.”

In her mind, she thought Tonks would actually mind quite a bit. The evening routine with a five-year-old was already enough of a struggle as it was without unexpected houseguests. But Cho followed her inside the house, her bright-orange trainers squeaking on the concrete step. 

Although she remembered Cho had Floo-called the previous day, Ginny felt rather self-conscious letting her into her house. Would she look around wondering which parts of it were parts of Ginny that she hadn't gotten to know because Ginny was so _emotionally unavailable_? A part of her wanted to explain that it was all Tonks, but the other, louder, part of her knew that it was important not to give in now.

“Wotcher Cho.”

“Hello, Tonks,” Cho said.

“Hey, I hope you don’t mind,” Ginny said. “We’ll just be a short while.”

“We were just about to go to bed anyway,” Tonks said. “Come on, Teddy. Finish your milk. It’s time for your bedtime story.”

Teddy scattered up from his chair, grabbing his toys from the kitchen table into his small hands. Tonks gave them a final nod of goodnight before heading up the stairs with Teddy. Ginny felt a surge of guilt; she had missed spending time with Teddy again.

“Tea?” Ginny asked Cho.

“No thanks.”

In the light of the flat Ginny could see Cho properly: her blue, somewhat retro-looking windbreaker, the familiar Quidditch shorts and the rucksack with pins on the straps. She looked the same but somehow changed. For a moment Ginny could imagine it again: closing that distance and crashing their lips together, sorting it all out.

But Cho was wearing lipstick and it would smear, and Ginny recognized the weight in the pit of her stomach, the same one that had become less easy to ignore with each consecutive fight.

“Here’s your stuff. I finally went through my room and I think that should be everything.”

She handed Cho a bag and their hands touched briefly.

“Thanks.”

Cho placed the bag on her shoulder but didn’t turn to leave. Ginny grew self-conscious under her gaze; her eyes wandered to the corner of the kitchen counter. It was scratched from the time Tonks had somehow managed to cut through a cutting board when she had cut vegetables with somewhat more vigour than was necessary. Ginny stared at the maze of scratches in newfound fascination all the while conscious of the clock ticking in the background.

“Sometimes I turn around at night and it feels weird not to have you there,” Cho said.

Ginny looked up. There was a sadness in Cho’s eyes, and it made her heart leap just the slightest. A part of her still had that reflex that made her want to reach out.

She hadn’t thought about Cho much during the nights. She did like sharing a bed, but most of the time she just came home knackered and ended up passing out on her bed, often forgetting to even take her clothes off. Quick, rough sex and the occasional kiss were what she had time for, and it was enough for her. It was also the best she could give.

“But then I remember the last few months and how little you were actually there, and how you never wanted to talk about our future,” Cho said.

Avoidance, that had been Ginny’s major problem that had followed her through her relationships. She couldn’t deny that. She still didn’t say anything.

“I really thought we’d be together forever. I thought you were the one for me.”

“I know,” Ginny said. She didn’t know if she felt more miserable about seeing Cho so heart-broken or the accusation in her voice, but each of Cho’s words made her feel more wretched, as if she was somehow incapable of love.

“You know, I was going to come here at six and wait for you to come home like an idiot. I thought you might be home early since it’s a Friday and all. But then I remembered how you were the whole time we dated and I chose to come two hours later. I actually only ended up waiting a few minutes.”

“You could have owled,” Ginny said, not liking where this was heading.

It’s not like she had been that bad. And she had only forgotten their date-night _twice_.

“It’s just stupid, isn’t it? How everything can go to shit just because our jobs take up all our time and we don’t have time to talk about things… I just want to focus on what’s actually important. Not work but people. Friends. Quidditch. You,” she said, pinning Ginny with her warm-brown eyes that had gained a coldness that hadn’t been there before since the last time they had seen each other.

“Cho... I—” Ginny started. “You’re important to me, you really are.”

“Important as in ‘willing to lick your cunt’, or important in the ‘I want to share my life with you’ kind of way?”

“I…” Ginny said. When she found that there was nothing she could say to improve the situation, she said: “I’m sorry.”

“I should have known,” Cho said. She snorted. “I can’t believe I wasted so many months on you. I should have listened to Marietta. She said all along that you aren’t into me.” She gave a laugh-cry. “You went to the office to write fucking _reports_ on Fridays rather than spend time with me on the only nights I was off work. I wonder if that was what you were actually up to.”

“I never cheated on you!” Ginny said. “Marietta is talking bullshit and you know it. I’ve explained this to you a hundred times! Shacklebolt doesn’t give out new cases unless the paperwork for the previous case is done.”

“I don’t care about Shacklebolt and your stupid cases!” Cho said. “All I know is that you weren’t there when I needed you.”

Her voice was stone-cold and venomous, carrying more hurt than Ginny had thought Cho was capable of. It felt like a cold slap in the face.

“Then maybe we needed different things,” she said after a long pause.

“Maybe!”

And with that, Cho stormed out.

A minute later, Tonks came back down, the stairs creaking quietly under her feet. Ginny looked up from where she had been leaning against the kitchen counter staring at the wall.

“Sorry,” Ginny said. Tonks’s hair was sticking out like she had already been to bed. “I didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand. I should have cast Muffliato. Did you get Teddy to sleep?”

“I put a Silencing Charm on his room. Call it Auror’s intuition,” Tonks said with a huff of amusement.

She walked past Ginny into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Turning to lean on the counter, her eyes found Ginny’s.

“Are you okay?” Tonks asked, brows furrowed slightly.

Ginny wasn’t. She needed a drink, but Tonks stood by the kitchen counter in an almost guarding way.

“I’m going to go out,” Ginny said. “I need some air.”

She felt like going for a run or flying. She felt like she needed something physical to balance out the agitated state she was in.

Tonks stared at her for a moment longer, but then shrugged and turned to the sink to set some washing up spells in motion. Ginny appreciated her for not pressing it any further.

Ginny thought for a second about going to the Department gym like she usually did, but the idea of passing through the office and having to make small talk to the Aurors working late shift didn’t exactly appeal to her. She made up her mind and snatched her spare broom from the corner of her room. She didn’t want to take her racing broom; it did not handle Apparition well.

She went to the small backyard of their house and Apparated.

***

She appeared by the front gates of Malfoy Manor. The twisting black steel looked like decorative bones against the starry sky. It was colder in Scotland than in England; there was a sense of autumn chill in the air. Ginny breathed in the freshness; it felt good after the suffocating feeling in her home.

She mounted her broom and flew over the gate, feeling a buzz of energy when she crossed the wards. Malfoy had stayed true to his word and adjusted the wards so that the Aurors could get in.

The breeze bit her cheeks and Ginny felt the same exhilaration she felt every time she mounted a broom. She hadn’t gone flying in weeks. She had quit the amateur Quidditch team due to work (what she had told Cho was the main reason for her quitting) and to get time away from her suffocating relationship (what she hadn’t told Cho). She would sometimes play one-to-one with Cormac on the weekends, but he was a rubbish player. And there had been the occasional matches with her brothers at the Burrow, but these days it was nearly impossible for them all to gather together with everyone living such busy lives.

The idea of a private Quidditch pitch had seemed ludicrous to her, but now that she saw it she couldn’t help but take it in in admiration. The pitch was well-kept, the lawn beneath it short and neat. There were viewing stands on both sides. Malfoy, the pompous bastard, probably loved bringing guests to watch him fly. Ginny could make out a dark building close to the pitch. It was supposedly the gym Malfoy had been talking about.

She began to fly around the pitch, occasionally changing direction or going for a practice feint. Cho’s words still stung, but the exhilaration of flying helped soothe her. Cho and her never should have been anything more than friends with benefits. Perhaps that way they could have been friends in the first place, and none of the drama would have followed.

It was over now, in any case.

In the pit of her stomach, mingling with the recent agitation and guilt, Ginny could feel something new, something positive. Something that felt a bit like freedom.

She noticed she was smiling when she landed her broom on the ground.

She glanced at her watch. It was late, but she had time for a quick workout. She had skipped a few too many workouts in her regime recently just to avoid the Department gym. There was something disturbing about seeing Kingsley huffing and sweating like a regular human being; Ginny had always liked to think the Department Head’s physique came from years of meditating and living off plants in the mountains of Tibet or something. Besides, any time she was at the gym, Michael Corner liked to come in and throw suggestive comments at her.

She found the door unlocked. Malfoy seemed to trust his wards enough to keep any intruders off his property. Ginny spelled the lights on, revealing a cozy gym with spotless, modern equipment.

She got to work, doing a few sets for each muscle group. Her mind wandered to the case again. Malfoy was the only person who had had any opportunity to get into the gallery at night, or so it seemed. Knowing Emerald Rose, Ginny wouldn’t have put it past him to get into the most well-guarded places. He had done it before. But the case was starting to look bad against Malfoy. His alibi was shaky at best, too.

Ginny wondered if she was the last person to be using this gym equipment for a while.

She decided to take a quick shower before going home. She didn’t like the idea of tiptoeing through the house to take a shower. She transfigured one of her socks into a towel and slipped into the showers.

The steaming water felt luxurious against her sweaty skin. Ginny let herself use generous amounts of the expensive bathing products Malfoy kept in his showers. She thought she could smell a faint smell of smoke through the steam, but she dismissed the thought as part of her imagination.

She left the showers more relaxed than she had felt in days.

“Aaargh!”

Ginny almost dropped her towel. Pansy stood in front of her, smoking a fag. A lazy smile played on her face. She was not wearing any lipstick.

Pansy was the very image of a useless pureblood wife, wrapped in a dress of some luxurious material and diamonds hanging off her earlobes. Ginny bet the hardest thing in Pansy’s life was deciding which gown to wear to whichever Ministry charity ball was being held, or which of the numerous gossip magazines to read.

“Good shower?” she said, grinning at Ginny’s reaction.

“What the fuck, Pansy?” Ginny said.

She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Pansy had seen into the showers from where she stood. Spying on her seemed like the kind of thing Pansy would do. Somehow, the idea made her feel hot, and Ginny felt herself flush. She cursed the bright light in the room, and the way Pansy kept looking at her as if Ginny was a piece of meat and Pansy was a lion.

Pansy vanished her remaining cigarette with her wand.

“I was watching you fly. You’re very good. Admirable technique.”

Ginny did not know whether she was mocking her or not.

“I flew at school,” she said from the lack of having anything better to say.

“I know. I was there,” Pansy said with a little laugh.

Ginny didn’t have anything to respond to that.

“I’d like to get dressed,” she said stiffly, wondering what it would take to make Pansy take a hint.

“Don’t mind me,” Pansy said, reminding Ginny of her words inside the Manor. She turned around. Ginny could hear her mutter a quiet ‘Incendio’, and after a second, she saw cigarette smoke rise from behind her.

Ginny turned to where her clothes were. She checked the pockets, relieved to find that the anti-theft spell she had used was still in place. It had been careless of her to leave her Auror robes and wand unguarded; she would have to watch herself from doing it again. She slipped on her underwear and with a paranoid glance over her shoulder, let the towel drop to the floor.

When she turned back around fully-clothed, Pansy was still turned away from her, finishing her smoke.

“Ready?”

“Yeah,” Ginny said.

Pansy turned around; her earrings dangled on her small earlobes. She put out her cigarette and vanished it.

“We should play a match someday,” she said conversationally, as if Ginny was one of her posh pureblood friends. The whole situation was absurd; Ginny’s brain didn’t quite register what was happening.

“You fly?” Ginny said.

“I’ve flown since I was four,” Pansy said. It was typical Slytherin boasting, but something about her honest vanity made Ginny warm up to the woman in front of her just slightly.

“You weren’t on the team,” Ginny pointed out.

“Slytherin didn’t let girls on the team.”

“That’s shit.”

“I know.”

Pansy didn’t look too bothered about it. She gave a shrug and kept staring Ginny in the eyes, the same indecipherable smile playing on her lips. The whole conversation seemed like a farce; neither of them believed in it. Another more significant conversation was happening behind it, but Ginny wasn’t quite sure what they were saying.

Pansy took a step forward and Ginny went stiff as she raised her wand.

“Here, let me,” Pansy said softly. She pointed the wand at Ginny’s hair and cast a drying charm. Ginny could smell her perfume and the faint scent of smoke that clung to her. She stood mere inches away.

Later, Ginny would try to justify what happened next to herself by saying it was all a part of her strategy. Malfoy was suspicious; therefore, it was necessary to get close to someone who knew him well. Pansy was close to him, Pansy had happened to be there, Pansy had been convenient. But the truth was, Ginny had no excuse for what she found herself saying next.

“You’re beautiful,” Ginny said.

It wasn’t even strictly true. Pansy still had a nose like a pug, her lips were too big for her face and she wore too much makeup. But she had confidence like no-one else, and her curves were inviting and her eyes challenging.

Pansy’s smile widened.

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Maybe,” Ginny said, keeping the eye contact.

“My, what questionable morals you have, Auror Weasley,” Pansy said. She brought a hand to Ginny’s face and brushed back a lock of hair.

Ginny stared into her dark eyes, unaware that she was holding her breath until Pansy brought her lips to hers.

The moment their lips touched, Ginny realized how badly she wanted her. She also realized instantly what a bad idea it was.

Pansy tasted like cigarette smoke. Her lips were soft and hard at the same time, and what started as a soft press of lips soon turned rough, the air around them crackling with potential and with the mingling of their energies.

Ginny closed her eyes. She felt her knickers flood with warmth and her legs shake as Pansy pressed a knee in her crotch. She blamed the blasted perfume Pansy wore; she was sure it contained veela pheromones or something to make her feel this way.

She forced her brain to think about what was happening for a moment.

This was Pansy Parkinson. It had to be one of two options. Either she was a bored housewife looking for some entertainment or she was plotting something. Either way, it was risky getting involved with her. If anything happened, Pansy would find a way to twist things around for her benefit.

Ginny pulled away from her.

“Look, I have to head home,” she said. Her voice was slightly breathless from the kiss. It took all her mental power to take a step away from Pansy.

“Don’t go, Weasley.”

Pansy grabbed the front of Ginny’s Auror robes and pulled her into another hungry kiss.

Ginny wanted to melt back into the kiss with all her body. Pansy’s breasts pushed against hers, teasing, and the infuriating scent of her perfume made her want to throw all reason out of the window. But she had to remain firm; she had to think about the case. Ginny took Pansy by the shoulders and pushed her away firmly.

And before Pansy had time to react, she strode out of the building and Disapparated into the night.


	3. Saturday

Ginny looked at her watch, watching the slow movement of the hands. She didn’t know why she had bothered to come to the office on time when her partner was never there before half past.

She had had a particularly irksome morning and she was in a foul mood. She had slept restlessly, constantly shaken by dreams about full lips and a tantalizing smirk. And after what had seemed like no sleep at all, she had woken up to a Howler from her mother.

“GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY! I EXPECT TO SEE YOU AT HOME TOMORROW FOR SUNDAY ROAST. YOUR JOB IS NOT A REASON TO SKIP FAMILY DINNER THREE WEEKS IN A ROW.”

Her mother’s high-pitched voice still rang in her head and it had left her with a pounding headache that wouldn’t go away with potions.

She had grabbed the latest Prophet from the canteen where she had gone to buy a sandwich and some crisps for breakfast. With the most recent appearance of Emerald Rose, the press was hot with speculations and theories, and of course, made money off recollections of all his past crimes.

None of it was new to Ginny, of course, but she read the article to pass time and to distract herself from her headache.

The disappearance of the Heart of Vanity, an exceedingly rare magical pearl from the collection of the retired explorer Sir Alfee Shafiq had caused quite a stir in the wizarding community at the time it had been stolen. The story of the pearl itself was surrounded by scandal and was rumoured to have been stolen from merpeople some decades ago.

There had been the emptying of a hidden vault in Nott Manor a few weeks ago (forcing a resolutely withdrawn Theodore Nott and his family into the merciless spotlight of the press for a couple of weeks).

Some rare (and hence invaluable) magical books had also disappeared from the recently refurbished private library of an old widow, Violetta Bulstrode. An emerald rose had been found sticking through the books on the shelf where the titles had gone missing from. Mrs Bulstrode had been unhappy with the theft, of course, but had seemed to enjoy telling the story to as many reporters as she could. Each version of the story seemed to gain a few more details, each more ludicrous than the previous.

There was also some speculation on whether the disappearance of an ancient vase from an antique store run by the esteemed Tatum Travers a little less than a year ago could have been the works of Emerald Rose, despite the lack of his signature mark at the crime scene. Ginny suspected it was; the elegant job definitely bared resemblance to the master thief’s other accomplishments.

Ginny glanced at her watch again. Finally, the minute hand clicked into place and as if summoned, Cormac ambled into the office holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a stylish leather briefcase in another.

“Morning, my dear partner,” he said dryly.

“Morning.” _Arsehole_ , Ginny wanted to add.

“So, what’s going on?”

“Interrogations,” Ginny said. “I got permission from Shacklebolt to interrogate one of Malfoy’s house elves. She should be in Interrogation Room One shortly.”

Ginny quickly shared with him what she had discovered at Hermione’s. Cormac looked equally baffled at Hermione’s notes, squinting his eyes at the mathematical equations.

“Are you sure Granger knows what she’s doing?” he said. “Because I remember her from Hogwarts, and she didn’t seem particularly bright to me.”

“I would think not letting you get into her knickers proves that she is very intelligent,” Ginny said, biting back a grin. Before Cormac had time to respond, she turned on her heels and started to head towards the Interrogation Room.

In the room, they faced a trembling elf.

Bibby was a pathetic creature with large, watery eyes and a sickly tink to her skin, and she was draped in what looked like a bit of old curtain.

“Bibby does not want to talk to Aurors. Bibby is here against her will and Master Draco’s instructions.”

“Don’t worry, we have permission from your precious Master,” Ginny said as she sat down in front of her. “Unfortunately, just like you, he doesn’t really have a choice.”

The elf crossed her knobbly arms in front of her and gave Ginny what she supposed was a stern stare.

“Bibby refuses to answer any questions. Aurors have no business sniffing in business of Master Draco.”

Ginny turned to Cormac. “Does Veritaserum work on house elves?”

Cormac caught on and grinned. “I think so. I can go ask Auror Shacklebolt if he’ll spare us any.”

Bibby looked alarmed, fear flashing in her huge eyes. Ginny gave her what she thought was a reassuring smile. “If you participate, there will be no need for potions. Bibby, you’re usually in charge of taking care of your Master’s bedroom. What time did he go to sleep on the night between Wednesday and Thursday?”

Bibby looked miserable.

“Bibby will have to stick her head in the fireplace for this. Oh, what will Master Draco do with Bibby once he hears…” she wailed quietly, while Ginny and Cormac waited somewhat impatiently. She pulled at her floppy ears in a way that looked painful, and Ginny was almost ready to mention the Truth Serum again when she finally said in a pitiful voice: “The bed of Master Draco and Mistress Pansy was empty all night.”

“I knew it,” Ginny breathed.

Once they were back in the office, Ginny was too excited to sit down. She started pacing around the office while Cormac slumped into his office chair and watched her in half-interest.

“Malfoy is our murderer,” Ginny said. “I don’t know how he did it, but you have to admit he had all the opportunity, and he’s the one who benefits the most. And now we know he doesn’t even have an alibi…”

“I don’t see how he would benefit. All the murder has caused is negative media attention on him and his businesses,” Cormac said.

“Just think! It’s clever. Kill a man in your own gallery, steal something as well. No-one will suspect you because no idiot would set themselves up like that. Plus, you’ll get hefty compensation in the form of insurance money from the stolen art and I’ll bet you my arse that Malfoy has put a fortune into insuring his gallery,” Ginny said. She came to a stop in front of Cormac’s desk. “Think about it, McLaggen!”

“I’m not saying you don’t necessarily have a point,” Cormac said coolly. “But what you’re throwing at me is just theories and nothing to back it up with. Malfoy may not have a solid alibi, but a lot of other potential suspects don’t either. And how would you explain the other thefts? Was Malfoy behind every crime committed by Emerald Rose?”

Ginny stopped, her brain fuming with theories and possibilities. She knew Cormac was making a reasonable point, but she didn’t want to listen. Malfoy didn’t exactly fit her mental picture of Emerald Rose. But it was obvious Malfoy was connected to the crime in some case. She just had an _intuition_ about it.

“Fine, don’t believe me,” Ginny said. “But I’m going to try to look into his whereabouts during the past thefts. Maybe he is connected with them.”

“Good luck tracing back through weeks of time,” Cormac said. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his expensive patent leather shoes onto the table. Cormac never wore the more practical shoes that came with the Auror uniform and Ginny had stopped commenting on it. “Have you ever considered the possibility that Emerald Rose is in fact several people? Or that the Poison Gallery case was just somebody impersonating him for the attention?”

To her embarrassment, Ginny hadn’t considered either. She had been too excited about chasing the criminal of her dreams to even consider such alternatives. She felt heat rise to her cheeks, annoyed by the fact that Cormac had thought about such things before her.

“Well, that would just strengthen the case against Malfoy, wouldn’t it?” she said, just to say something back. “My arguments about him benefitting the most still stand.”

“It could be someone who has something against him,” Cormac said.

“Why are you defending him so much?”

“Why are you picking him out like he’s our only suspect?” Cormac said back.

Ginny wanted to shout “because he’s incredibly suspicious, you moron!”, but instead she narrowed her eyes and looked at Cormac thoughtfully.

“You know something, don’t you? You’re not telling me everything.” Ginny said. “I’m going to have a look at those accounts.”

“They’re fine! I even have the report on them, look, it’s accredited and everything!”

Cormac spelled open his briefcase and a stack of papers flew out.

“Hmph,” Ginny said. She snatched them from mid-air and looked them over. Whomever Cormac had asked to do the job had at least known how to do it convincingly. The report attached to the accounts looked very official with an elaborate company logo that looked very rich and pureblood. Ginny knew she was being petty and unprofessional, but she stuffed the papers into her bag just in case.

“I’ll take over investigating Malfoy, by the way,” Ginny said. “I want you to focus on Carrow and the rest of the Gallery staff.”

They had long since found out that spending as little time as possible around each other was the best way they worked, which is why they often split up the work.

“What? No!” Cormac sat back up in his seat again and looked at her angrily. “Why do you get Malfoy?”

_Because I’m the only person here that actually works_ , Ginny thought. Aloud, she said: “Because I want him. He’s my suspect.”

“But Malfoy and I get along. I could get much more out of him than you.”

Ginny suspected Cormac only wanted to keep talking to Malfoy in order to sneak his way into rich pureblood circles, and possibly to make use of the Quidditch pitch. It was unlikely that he would do anything that would actually aid the investigation.

“You can talk to Malfoy all you want after this is over,” Ginny said. _Unless he’s in Azkaban after all this_. "Remember the Nicholson case when I let you tail that young wife of the suspect who ended up being the killer? Well, you owe me from that time, and this is you making up for that. I want Malfoy and Pansy. Besides, you can have Greengrass.”

“Daphne isn't a suspect,” Cormac said.

“Oh _Daphne_ now, is it?” Ginny said. “Gotten to know her well since Thursday?”

“Well… not as much as I’d like,” Cormac said, looking defensive. “But she’s into me, I can tell.”

Ginny snorted. Let Cormac hold onto his fantasy if that’s what he wanted to do. It wouldn’t be the first time he got involved with a suspect.

She tried to ignore the little voice that reminded that her current actions in the current case weren’t much different.

_Shut up_ , she said to the voice. _It won’t happen again._

“Pansy, Malfoy’s wife. Why are you interested in her?” Cormac said, bringing her back to reality.

“Huh?” Ginny said, cheeks flushing.

“She’s not a suspect, so why did you say ‘Malfoy’ _and_ Pansy’?”

“Er...” Ginny said, thinking quickly. “If Malfoy is our criminal, she might know something or try to protect him or something. She already did, if you don’t recall. She told us that Malfoy was asleep all night the night of the murder, when clearly he wasn’t.”

“Hmm,” Cormac said, appearing begrudgingly impressed. But when he turned around to gather his cloak and other possessions, Ginny heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “I would fuck those tits too”.

“Well, see you later. I need to get out of this stuffy office. This is much too early to work on a Saturday anyway,” Cormac said. “Oh, and remember to tell Malfoy that his accounts are okay. Apparently my man had never seen accounts so well kept.”

And with that he headed out and towards what Ginny suspected was the break room.

***

It was past midday when Ginny Apparated outside the borders of the Hogwarts grounds. On another day she would have liked to enjoy an afternoon pint at the Three Broomsticks, but today she was too conscious about how much she had to do for the case to allow herself a break.

If only she had permission to set a tracking spell on Malfoy… But his current behaviour didn’t warrant tracking him or even searching the Manor, no matter how suspicious he seemed or how little Ginny liked his face. And Ginny didn’t want to do anything that might cause Shacklebolt to assign the case to someone else.

It didn’t help that she had to work for two, she thought as she crossed the grounds. Cormac had his moments of brilliance once in a while, but mostly he was just dead weight. Ginny didn’t know what he did most of his work hours; she suspected he spent a lot of it staring at his reflection in the mirror and the rest of it being a general nuisance.

Hagrid’s old hut looked as welcoming as ever: a wisp of smoke danced above the chimney, and there were flowerpots with blooming summer flowers in them by the stone steps. It was always weird to be visiting and not be greeted by the friendly half-giant. Ginny gave the door a hearty knock.

“Ginny! Come in,” Neville greeted at the door.

The years after Hogwarts had treated him well. He had regained some of that boyish plumpness that had been so characteristic of him, and his cheeks glowed as he led her into the hut. Since Hogwarts, he had done an apprenticeship with a Herbologist in Argentina and returned to Scotland to take over as the Professor of Herbology after Sprout’s retirement. Instead of living in the castle, he had opted to move into Hagrid’s old hut and take care of the greenhouses and grounds all year round.

The hut was an odd mixture of rustic and scientific. Hagrid’s old wooden table and some of his belongings were still there, but they had been shrunken to a more convenient size. There was some lab equipment Ginny understood nothing about - she knew Neville had simple research facilities inside the greenhouses but he probably couldn’t resist continuing his research in his home. Being Neville, the hut was full of plants: there were pots on every surface, flowers hung drying from racks in the ceiling, and an earthy mixture of scents invaded her nose.

“Sorry, it’s a bit warm in here. I’m attempting to extract oils from some magical herbs. My new hobby,” Neville said, pointing absently to the cauldron in the fireplace. “You know how I was never any good at Potions? Well, I recently bought a new cauldron set and started to experiment, just simple things of course. It’s nice to have some projects during the summertime when the children are gone. Of course, I still botch it some of the time. Nearly blew up the hut last week, had to spell an emergency rain cloud inside. Everything was absolutely soaked.”

Ginny listened to him ramble with fondness. They had been close during the war, but due to both of their busy lives, they only saw each other once or twice a year.

“You look well, Neville,” she said after Neville had stopped to do something in the kitchen.

Neville beamed. “So do you.”

“Tea?” Neville said. He brought the heavy brass kettle to the table. “I have a blend of Midnight Mate and African Pepper Plant that should be as strong as coffee if you want your caffeine needs taken care of.”

“Yes please,” Ginny said, putting the cup in front of her forward.

“I’m not much of a baker, but I have some biscuits I made the other day. Spiced up with a bit of lavender and lemon from the greenhouses...”

“I’m sure they’re just fine,” Ginny said, remembering some of the less delightful “delicacies” she had been served at this very same table. Hagrid’s rock cakes had been legendary.

They caught up for some minutes. Neville always had some good anecdotes on the students (there was always that _one_ idiot who thought handling baby mandrakes without earmuffs was the act of rebellion that would earn the admiration of their peers). Ginny sipped her tea while they chatted, enjoying the buzz from it. Had Neville been inclined towards a life of crime, he could have made a good living selling herbal stimulants to fatigued Ministry employees.

“I didn’t come here just to catch up,” Ginny said sometime after her fourth biscuit. “I was wondering… Do you have a method for checking if two samples of flowers could originate from the same place?”

“You mean geographically?”

“I mean more like… if they could be from the same plant,” Ginny said. “I know it sounds ridiculous, and it’s probably impossible. I don’t understand anything about Herbology. I just thought I’d ask.”

Neville looked thoughtful for a moment and then faced her with a mysterious smile.

“I might know just the thing you need,” he said. “Some plants, certain old trees and some delicate flowers and other magically powerful plants do have a strain of magic in their DNA that is very specific to each individual plant.”

“DNA?”

“Deoxyribonucleic acid, it’s the—”

“Nevermind,” Ginny quickly said. It was better to interrupt him before he got carried away. “Here, I’ve got the two samples in my pocket. Do you think you can test if they’re from the same plant?”

Neville took the samples - one from the rose found next to Fawley’s body and the other from Malfoy Manor garden. His face screwed up in what Ginny recognized as his research mode, and he soon forgot all about her as he turned to his lab equipment to do whatever it was Herbologists did. Ginny helped herself to another cup of tea and shamelessly devoured another two biscuits. Aurors needed their strength (and their caffeine).

“Ginny?” Neville said. “I don’t know if this is the answer you wanted, but the petals most definitely seem to come from the same plant. I’ve never seen magic quite like this. It’s a beautiful strain.”

“Yes!” Ginny bounced up from the bench. “I thought so.”

“Who did I condemn to Azkaban?” Neville said half-jokingly.

“No-one just yet, but you certainly helped,” Ginny said, grinning.

She gave Neville a hug at the door and invited him over to her and Tonks’s place sometime. Due to their busy schedules, it would probably never happen, but Neville promised he would write more often.

On her way off the grounds, Ginny was intercepted by a snowy owl she didn’t recognize that reminded her of the late Hedwig. It was carrying a note written on some expensive-looking paper that smelled like perfume.

_  
Auror Weasley (may I call you Ginny?),_

_I hope you slept well last night. In your distraction, you seem to have forgotten your broom. I’ve kept it shrunken so my husband doesn’t wonder about an extra broom in our house._

_Please come over for tea and fetch it at your convenience._

_Yours,_  
Pansy Malfoy  


Ginny could imagine the devilish smile that must have played on her face when she had written it. She didn’t know what Pansy was up to, but apparently she was not yet done playing games with her. Ginny crumbled the note up and stuffed it into her pocket. She would worry about what to do about Pansy (and her broom) later. She tried to ignore the way the letter had made her heart beat.

She decided to give her brothers a visit in their shop on Diagon Alley. She was running alarmingly low on some of the tools and weapons that she had learned to rely on to make her job easier. George and Ron supplied her with Extendable Ears and other useful (and often illegal) creations (the use of which she wisely chose not to share with her partner or Shacklebolt) from the backroom of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

Maybe afterwards she would stop for that pint in the Leaky Cauldron.

***

“Thanks George,” Ginny said. They were in the backroom of the store on Diagon Alley in a space riddled with strange odours, unidentifiable objects and what looked like children’s toys.

George had just handed him the most recent of his inventions, a small cylinder that shot slime out of its end at the press of a button. The slime wasn’t exactly _poisonous_ , but it would certainly do enough damage to allow her to escape if she was ever in a sticky situation without her wand.

The bag Ginny had received contained a good collection of Extendable Ears, bottles of Slippery Solution (to make any surface unwalkable), and Diverting Dungbombs (a variation of the classic stink bomb that showed a figure moving in the opposite direction of one’s actual movements in the stink cloud).

“So, how’s your love life?” George asked, sending a wry grin at her.

Ginny grimaced. George loved to tease her about Cho. He had found it hilarious that Ginny had started to go out with her ex’s ex, often playfully suggesting that this was what had turned Harry gay and made him leave the country.

Ginny averted the question by asking one back.

“How’s _your_ love life? Luna’s been awfully mysterious about the date you two went on.”

“Luna’s awfully mysterious about everything,” George replied smoothly, but to her satisfaction Ginny saw his ears turn red. It was enough of an answer for her. She would find an opportunity to tease him about it later.

“Thanks again,” she said before she exited the backroom. “See you tomorrow at Mum’s dinner!”

“Anything, little sister,” George said cheerfully. “Go catch the bad guys.”

Ginny waved at Ron as she passed the checkout but didn’t stop to talk as he was busy talking with some customers. Since his joining his brother’s business, Ron had taken over sales, leaving George and Lee Jordan with more time to develop new products in the back of the shop. On her way out, Ginny glanced at the rack of discount items: expiring Canary Creams for five sickles each and turd-flavoured jelly beans for two knuts – whatever anyone would do with the latter was beyond her, but her brothers seemed to know their clientele well enough to keep the money flooding in.

After a hearty lunch consisting of a sandwich with chips and a pint and a half of Leaky’s Special Stout, Ginny came back out to Diagon Alley, which was stifling under the afternoon sun.

She thought she’d nip through Knockturn Alley on the way back to the office to visit her favourite liquor store. Her current bottle was running low and she had been eyeing that bottle of Odgen’s Finest since her last paycheck.

She Glamoured her robes into a less conspicuous black – it did not do to traverse about Knockturn Alley in Auror robes – and slipped through the archway connecting the two alleys.

“Weasley!”

Pansy Parkinson stood in front of her, and closely next to her was Daphne Greengrass, who dangled several shopping bags off her arm. Ginny wanted to roll her eyes at the sight. In her experience, only people who wanted to boast about their money didn’t shrink their shopping bags.

The had just come out of Borgin and Burkes.

Wearing a blood-red summer dress that showed off her cleavage, Pansy looked practically devourable. The sight made Ginny ache with the memories from the previous night. Luckily, her Auror training had taught her to conceal her feelings; otherwise her face would have exposed yearning and confusion. She gave Pansy a nod of recognition.

Pansy returned the gesture with a surprisingly pleasant smile, but there was also something tense about her. It was as if she was nervous, but the Pansy Parkinson Ginny thought she knew was never nervous.

“My good friend Daphne Greengrass. Daphne, this is Auror Weasley. She's in charge of Draco's case,” Pansy said, nodding between the two.

“We've met,” Ginny said dryly. And just because she didn't like the way Pansy had hesitated to introduce them, she added, “and Ms Greengrass also met Cormac, my partner. They seemed to get along well.”

She was satisfied to notice Daphne blush a little at this. Pansy seemed too distracted to notice.

“Well, we were just doing some shopping,” Pansy said, voice drawling in a way that reminded Ginny of Malfoy. “Borgin and Burkes had some _lovely_ jewellery, didn’t they Daphne?”

Borgin and Burkes striked Ginny more as a place to make dodgy deals than to buy jewellery, but then again Slytherins had odd taste.

“Unfortunately, we had to leave them today, we’re already carrying so much,” Daphne said, nodding at her bags with a self-satisfied smile. Ginny decided she didn’t like Daphne Greengrass very much.

“Day off then?” Pansy said, lifting an eyebrow at Ginny’s plain black robes. “I didn’t think you folk got any with an important case like this going on.”

“Late lunch break,” Ginny said with a shrug.

“Ah. Come over when you have time. I still have your broom,” Pansy said. “Draco should be gone all night today.”

Pansy’s eyes raked her up and down and Ginny tried her best not to blush under the scrutiny. Pansy’s look was the kind of look that only a woman who likes women would give another woman. Her perfume and the faintest scent of sweat mixed with sun protection potion found Ginny’s nose, and she could feel her body shiver with desire.

“I’ll think about it,” Ginny said, more breathlessly than she would have liked.

“We’ll be on our way then,” Pansy said, giving her one last meaningful look before hooking arms with Daphne and walking past her.

Ginny made up her mind in a fraction of a second. She gave a wistful look at the liquor store that she would have to postpone visiting for some other time and hid behind the corner of the nearest shop. She took out a mirror and a pointed her wand at herself.

She spelled her hair a chestnut brown and gave herself a shoddy tan. Ginny was terrible at Glamour charms, but as long as her hair wasn’t as glaringly red as usual and some of her freckles were toned down, perhaps they wouldn’t recognize her. As a final touch, she transfigured a napkin into a hat and placed it on her head. She just hoped the spells would hold as long as they needed to.

Before the two women had had time to disappear entirely out of her sight, she hastily followed them, making sure to keep at least a few people between them.

She followed them through Diagon Alley and when they entered Leaky, Ginny knew she had to think quick.

_Shit_ , she thought. If they were going to use the Floo in the Leaky Cauldron, Ginny wouldn’t be able to follow them, but perhaps she would have time to hear where they were heading. But if they were heading through the front out into muggle London... Ginny needed to transfigure her robes into something more passable.

She found a shadowy corner in the backyard of the pub. A large man in tattered robes was smoking a cigarette at the opposite corner, but Ginny didn’t have time to care about him. She quickly did another Glamour, vanishing her hat and turning the robes into a black t-shirt and jeans. The smoker raised an eyebrow at her but didn’t say anything. The Leaky Cauldron had seen stranger customers.

Ginny rushed into the pub, hoping she looked alright. She stuffed her wand inside her shirt; it poked uncomfortably every time she moved but at least it wasn’t visible underneath the loose material. She was just in time to see Daphne shrink her shopping bags and the two women walk out onto the street.

***

Ginny didn’t know what had prompted her to follow Pansy. It may have been that Daphne was a suspects, or perhaps she had had a hunch that Pansy would lead her to some more evidence concerning Malfoy. The last option – that she simply wanted to know more about the woman who had kissed her last night – she ignored.

She had nearly lost them in a group of tourists near Brick Lane, but then she had seen a flash of Daphne’s blonde hair and caught up with them again. They had entered an art gallery, and Ginny had waited outside for a couple of minutes to avoid raising suspicion.

The gallery, called Dalí on Acid, was small and edgy. She hoped it wouldn’t be too empty; it was already risky going after magical folk in a muggle part of town – witches could sometimes sense the presence of other witches. Ginny did some final adjustments to her Glamour charms behind a nearby alley and slipped inside.

She didn’t have muggle currency so she was forced to perform a hasty Confundus on the woman at the front desk.

_It’s all for the case_ , she thought with an internal wince as she passed through the sliding doors into the exhibition rooms. She hoped the dazed look in the receptionist’s eyes would fade before the next customer came along. Furthermore, she hoped Shacklebolt would never have to hear about her rule-breaking.

The gallery was almost empty of visitors; Ginny dodged behind a large sculpture that seemed to consist of old car tyres and dildos to consider her next move.

Pansy and Daphne stood in front of a large three-dimensional painting that looked suspiciously like it was meant to depict female genitals albeit badly executed. They spoke in low voices, occasionally snickering.

Ginny grabbed a leaflet from a plastic stand and pretended to read in concentration as she walked closer to them.

“You were pretty obvious back there,” Daphne said, pinning Pansy with an amused look, “when we bumped into Weasley.”

“Well, I can’t help it that redheads make me go wild,” Pansy said, smirking back.

They laughed in a way that made Ginny feel a twinge of outsideness despite having little real connection to either of them. She watched a hand slide around Pansy’s waist. Pansy didn’t do anything to move it and it lingered there for a moment; they were apparently _very_ good friends. If it hadn’t been for Daphne’s comment, Ginny would have thought they were more than that.

She gritted her teeth behind the leaflet.

“So, I hear Draco’s been thinking of expanding to muggle art,” Pansy said. “I can see his point. Look at this,” she said, pointing at the three-dimensional vulva. It was covered in some dark, glittery substance meant to represent pubic hairs. “Now this is what I call art. It looks practically edible. I have to admit it is quite genius.”

Daphne snorted.

“That’s not the one he has his eyes on,” she said. “Come on, the one he’s been raving about is here.”

She let go of her arm around Pansy’s waist and grabbed her arm instead. She led Pansy across the room into the corner, where some abstract, colourful sculpture stood. 

Ginny inched closer, pretending to admire a pop art -style painting with some obscure muggle references while listening intently. She cursed herself mentally for letting Cormac handle the investigation on Daphne; she was starting to suspect she might have more to do with the case than she had originally thought. At least she was close enough to the wife of the prime suspect to raise suspicion.

“A bit classier, wouldn’t you say?” Daphne said. Pansy hummed in approval.

“Who knows,” Pansy said, her voice playful, “maybe Emerald Rose will strike just one more time. Leave Draco a happy present.”

Ginny froze; her palms began to sweat and her heart beat harder. She risked a peek at the two women from behind her leaflet. They stood close to each other. Ginny couldn’t make out their expressions; they were turned away from her.

Pansy had almost outright admitted it. _Malfoy was Emerald Rose!_

“Oh, but Emerald Rose is _definitely_ going to be busy tonight,” Daphne said, as if confirming Ginny’s thoughts.

They giggled and moved on to the next piece.

Pansy and Daphne lingered in the gallery for some fifteen minutes, making comical, jeering comments at the eccentric pieces of art. Ginny probably would have found a lot of it amusing had she been able to focus. Her thoughts were racing with updated theories and plans.

Pansy and Daphne were in on Malfoy’s criminal activities… No, perhaps they just knew about them without Malfoy knowing that they knew. As Malfoy’s wife, Pansy had plenty of insight into his private life. She had probably shared her knowledge with Daphne to make sure Daphne didn’t say anything incriminating during the investigations on the murder.

Neither of them seemed to take the case seriously, however. Laughing about Malfoy’s crimes when he had just murdered a man was macabre, to say the least. But they were both Slytherins, and Slytherins had questionable morals.

Ginny thought about all this grimly as she watched Pansy and Daphne leave the gallery. Red heels clicked on white marble, and Ginny stared at Pansy’s legs as she exited the room. She waited until she knew they would be far enough before she left the gallery herself.

Nodding at the receptionist who still looked a bit dazed, Ginny stepped outside into the warm evening and headed towards Leaky.

***

“Tonks!” Ginny said when she got home. “Can I borrow your motorcycle tonight? It’s an emergency.”

Tonks looked up from where she was on the floor, playing with Teddy. There was a towering creation made of wooden blocks in front of them.

“Hello to you too,” Tonks said with a lopsided smile.

“Sorry,” Ginny said, smiling back at Tonks’s tired face. She came down to the floor and sat down next to them. “Hi Teddy, what have you done today?”

“I saw Dad! We went to the park and I got to go on the slides and I went on the big slide even though Dad said I would be too scared. But I wasn’t scared at all! I went eleven times, Dad counted. And then we went to Floor Forts for ice cream and I got _two_ scoops. Do you wanna know what I chose?” the boy said excitedly. His hair was brown as if often was after he had been with his father.

Ginny chuckled at the mispronounced name of Diagon Alley’s famous ice cream parlour. “Well, tell me.”

“Candy floss and banana,” Teddy said. “And Dad got double chocolate.”

Ginny grabbed a building block and added it to Teddy’s tower. It was the muggle kind: no magically sticking pieces, no changing rainbow colors.

“No, that one goes here,” Teddy said. He took the piece and put it somewhere else according to some invisible but infallible child’s logic.

“He’s been hyper all evening because of the sugar high,” Tonks said to Ginny dryly. “I know it was a hot day, but I wish Remus wouldn’t have fed him so much ice cream.”

Ginny sniggered. She was glad to notice Tonks was in good humour tonight; her voice lacked the strain it usually held when she talked about Remus.

“Oh, and I’m not going to need the motorcycle tonight,” Tonks said. She cast an amused look around her and nodded at her domestic surroundings. “What do you need it for?”

“I need to get into muggle London. It’s for the case,” Ginny said. “I’d rather not walk from Leaky in case I need to move fast.”

The gallery wasn’t far from the Leaky Cauldron, but far enough to be an inconvenience. She wanted to avoid Apparition; she would already be breaking enough laws as it was. Apparating into muggle London had been banned by the Ministry due to the high probability of landing on a muggle.

And while she may not have admitted it, Ginny rather liked the motorcycle.

“It’s all yours,” Tonks said. “Do you need to leave soon?”

“Not right away,” Ginny said. “I can put Teddy to bed tonight. You relax.”

She had thought about working some more, updating her notes on the case and hatching up a plan to find out more about Daphne Greengrass, but she reckoned she could give herself some slack for one hour. She hadn’t spent nearly enough time with Teddy recently and wanted to make up for it.

“Why can’t Mummy relax with me?” Teddy said, looking up at the two adults next to him.

“Because you’re a little imp!” Ginny said, and snatched the little boy up. Teddy screeched with delight, wriggling his arms and legs in Ginny’s clutch. “You have way too much energy at this time of night. We need to wear you out with a really scary bedtime story tonight, won’t we?”

She let go of the giggling boy, whose hair had turned flaming red at the interaction. 

“Race you upstairs,” Ginny said to Teddy. “Let’s see who’s better at brushing their teeth tonight.”

Later, after Teddy had finally closed his eyes after a long, improvised bedtime story, Ginny tiptoed back downstairs. Tonks sat on the sofa reading one of Ginny’s Quidditch magazines.

“You’re going now?” she said, looking up from her reading.

“Yeah,” Ginny said. She pulled on her Auror robes and double-checked that she had everything she needed. She pointed her wand at the hem and transfigured the robes into what she thought was a convincing biker jacket and leather trousers.

“Stay safe, Gin,” Tonks said. Her face was a mixture of worry and affection.

“I will,” Ginny said. She grabbed the motorcycle keys from the hook by the door and left the house.

***

A muggle taxi passed her as she drove down the street she had followed Pansy and Greengrass down earlier that evening. She parked the motorcycle in front of the gallery. She had enjoyed the drive through the city. Her driving was still a bit shaky, but she had practiced enough on the countryside roads in the outskirts of the Burrow to be confident enough.

It was Saturday; the streets were busy with groups of muggles going out. Ginny snorted as she watched a girl topple over in her three-inch heels. Her friend caught her mid-fall and erupted into shrill laughter.

She waited until the group passed before she turned to face the gallery doors. A simple Alohomora would get her through the front door, but she had to prepare for what was inside. During her Auror training, she had taken an introductory course in muggle surveillance systems, but facing the real thing was always nerve-wracking. She didn’t want to be captured on a surveillance camera or end up inviting the cops around by triggering an alarm.

She looked behind her shoulder one more time before settling to work. The lock clicked open easily. She set some of the complex spells she had learned in motion and waited for them to take effect while keeping an eye on the street.

She waited for a quiet moment before she passed through the door. A red light blinked in the corner of the reception, but if Ginny had done her work right, the camera stationed there wouldn’t record anything.

She had to break through another lock to enter the exhibition room. Out of some paranoid instinct, she stuck to the walls as she made her way towards the sculpture Pansy and Greengrass had stood at before. She stationed herself beside the stand of a nearby sculpture from where the target was clearly visible. Perhaps it would provide her with some cover if she ended up having to fight. She knew she was overdoing it, but just in case, she cast a Disillusionment charm over herself. Her hairs stood up as the cold trickle of the spell set over her.

A potential wand fight alone with a man who had already killed was extremely unwise, but a part of Ginny relished in the idea. One of the main rules that had been instiled into their heads early in Auror training had been ‘never leave your partner’, but Ginny worked best in complete freedom. McLaggen didn’t know she was working tonight; for all she knew, he was probably fucking Daphne Greengrass or some other woman at the very moment.

She stared at the sculpture in the near-darkness, holding her wand tensely in her hand.

Hours passed. Her thighs ached from the squatting. She risked doing some stretches, hoping that the shuffling of her clothes was quiet enough to avoid the attention of a potentially invisible intruder. If he had any sense in him, Malfoy would come Disillusioned.

She couldn’t see her watch under the Disillusionment, but she knew that the time was well past midnight. She was just beginning to doubt Malfoy would appear at all when something moved in the darkness.

Ginny jumped to her feet, an uncomfortable heaviness trickling into her sleepy limbs. She pointed her wand in the direction of the movement and held her breath.

And a second later she lowered her wand and let out an annoyed huff.

A wispy, white creature stood in front of her. It was Cormac’s golden monkey Patronus. Ginny had teased him about it for a good few weeks after she had first seen it. Cormac had naturally defended it, claiming that monkeys were ferocious creatures, but it had been impossible to take the fluffy creature seriously.

The monkey opened its mouth and spoke in Cormac’s voice:

_Another theft by Emerald Rose. Borgin and Burkes. Come quick._

Ginny cursed aloud. The Patronus had had to have gone through a multitude of muggle streets to get to where she was from Knockturn Alley. She just hoped that all the muggles on the way had had enough pints in them to not notice a flash of white whir past them.

She needed to get to Knockturn Alley as soon as possible. She broke into a run and made towards the door. It was still dark in the exhibition room – the roof windows did little to lighten up the room at this time – and she brushed something in the darkness.

The penis sculpture tipped over dangerously; Ginny watched in horror as a few of the dildos toppled off and bounced to the floor. She was quick with her wand to stop the whole sculpture from falling over, cursing under her breath at her stupidity.

Once she got back out on the street, she cast a hasty locking charm on the front doors. She found the back wheel of Tonks’s motorcycle locked in some heavy muggle contraption. Attached to the handlebar was an official-looking slip of paper. _This vehicle will be towed in 48 hours unless a payment of £50 is made to…_ Ginny crushed the note in her fist, adrenaline pounding in her veins.

She heard some laughter from the end of the street; a group of muggle girls was leaving a nightclub. She didn’t have time to care. She pulled her wand out and quickly Vanished the lock-system, aware that she was breaking a number of wizarding laws with the action. Transfiguring a napkin into a helmet, she mounted the motorcycle and sped off.


	4. Sunday

“What was taken?” Ginny said the moment she appeared at the crime scene. She had come just in time to watch the forensics expert levitate a green rose into a box. There was not much for her to do.

She located her partner in the middle of the cluttered shop, surrounded by bustling forensics experts and a man with long, greasy hair and a hunched posture.

“Something called the Ring of Perceval,” Cormac said, not looking up from the papers in his hands. He was going through a catalogue of some sort. “Although if it wasn’t for the rose we found, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found it somewhere on the floor. Merlin knows it’s difficult enough to find anything in this mess…”

“Hey! Watch your words.”

The man with the long hair spoke and Ginny recognized him as Mr Borgin from a previous visit. She had been under disguise that time, trying to locate a smuggled batch of All-Opening Keys. It was a well-known fact that most of the shady business in this part of wizarding London happened in Borgin and Burkes, but the Aurors had never managed to find anything incriminating.

“And no murder?” Ginny asked.

“No murder,” Cormac confirmed.

“What’s special about this ring?” Ginny asked.

“Mr Borgin here claims that the wearer cannot die while wearing it,” Cormac said.

“It wards from accidents, murder and the like, not from dying from disease or old age,” the shopkeeper said, glaring at him. “Don’t twist my words, boy.”

He looked around his shop, grimy hands set on his hips, and his face twisted into a momentary look of despair.

“Oh, what am I going to do… I had a buyer for that ring, a very important client,” Borgin said. “You better find that thief, boy. We’re near bankrupt as it is. We recently renovated, too.”

Ginny didn’t see any signs of the alleged recent renovation when she looked around. Every surface was covered in dust and clutter. A skull glared at her with red-spelled eyes and she thought she could hear squeaking in the corner.

_Borgin and Burkes had some _lovely_ jewellery, didn’t they Daphne?_ Pansy’s words rang in her head, making her shudder despite the early morning heat.

Had Pansy been trying to warn her? She had been too focused on their words in the gallery, which in hindsight could have been a joke. If she did know or suspect Draco to be Emerald Rose, why would she want him to get caught?

If anything was sure, it was that Pansy Parkinson knew something about Emerald Rose. Ginny had to find a way to get close to her. She had a feeling it wasn’t going to be too difficult.

She snapped back to reality. There were interrogations to conduct and plans to be made.

“Ritchie,” Ginny said, turning to the Junior Auror, “can you figure out the whereabouts of Mr Malfoy earlier tonight for me?”

***

Ginny arrived home at midday after a sleepless night. Her eyes felt dry; she rubbed them tiredly as she entered the living room. All she wanted was to take a quick shower and fall into bed for a nap before leaving for the Burrow to please her Mum.

“Ginny? Would you mind looking after Teddy for a moment? I have to take a call.”

Tonks was at the fireplace; the flames danced green behind her frame. Teddy sat on his knees in the living room corner, surrounded by his building blocks again. He seemed absorbed in the activity.

“Do you want to do some colouring, Teddy?” Ginny said. “I can spell your drawing to move after you’re done. Come on, let’s go to your room.”

Teddy waddled up behind her and Ginny grabbed his hand. She led him upstairs to the kid-sized table in his room and with a sigh Levitated some pencils and paper in front of him.

She responded absentmindedly to Teddy’s chattering about his drawing. Her mind was a groggy mixture of sleep deprivation and thoughts on the case. She grabbed a coloured pencil but put it down. All she could think of drawing was green roses.

“Ginny, why aren’t you drawing?”

“I’m shit—not great at drawing. How about you draw something for me?” she said.

Teddy got to work and Ginny’s thought drifted back to the case and to Pansy.

Ritchie hadn’t been able to confirm Malfoy’s alibi for the night. Her theory was still solid-- no, it was starting to seem more and more likely that Malfoy was behind the crimes. The question was, why would Pansy want to expose him? Surely it would not benefit her to have him arrested. And from what Ginny had gathered, Pansy didn't do anything out of goodness.

Her mind was hatching up a plan, but she wasn’t sure it was a good one.

Pansy had invited her over. Pansy _wanted_ her. Whether it was simply because she wanted Ginny to fuck her or because she needed Ginny for something, it did not matter. Ginny could use it to get close to her and find out what she needed about Malfoy.

The thought of kissing Pansy’s lips again made her pulse race.

***

They came down half an hour later. Tonks was at the kitchen table, staring in front of her with an empty look in her eyes. Ginny gathered the Floo-call hadn’t gone well.

Ginny spelled the kettle on; she had given up on the idea of sleep and had decided to resort to plan B, caffeine. Se poured herself a cup of English Breakfast when Tonks cast a Muffliato around them.

“Remus just Floo-called,” Tonks said. She appeared tense. “He’s been offered the Defense position at Hogwarts.”

“Oh,” Ginny said, thinking about what she had heard. It meant Remus would be better able to support Teddy, which was a good thing. But… “Won’t that mean that he’ll be away from Teddy a lot?”

“Yeah. He’ll only be able to look after him on weekends, and not even all weekends, although he said he’d talk to McGonagall and see what he can do about it. That would only leave me some weekends to work. He said I wouldn’t have to work at all, though. With a full-time salary, he’d be able to support me and Teddy.”

“That sounds good,” Ginny said carefully.

“Yeah,” Tonks said.

She was quiet for a moment before looking back at Ginny. “Do you think I’m a horrible person for wanting to work even if I could choose spending more time with my son?”

Before Ginny could answer, she continued. “I know this is huge. Remus hasn’t had a proper job for years. He needs to take it, I have no right to tell him otherwise. But at the same time, I have been starting to hope that I could transfer back to being an Auror soon.

“It’s just that sometimes being a mother drives me insane. It feels like I don’t have any other part of me left, it’s like I’m a full-time mother and all those other parts, like being an Auror, and a friend—being _Tonks_ have disappeared somewhere.”

“They’re just gone temporarily,” Ginny said, watching Tonks in concern. She hugged her still-warm teacup in her hands, its contents forgotten.

“What would you do, Gin?” Tonks said.

The fact that Ginny’s Pygmy Puff Arnold had ended up in Molly’s care so often that it no longer recognized any place but the Burrow as its home should have been enough of a clue to everyone that Ginny was not the motherly type. Molly had still tried her best, particularly when Ginny had still been with Harry. Perfectly ignoring the fact that Ginny was at the start of her career, wasn’t even twenty-five and had no interest in children, she had taken to throwing un-casual hints at her at every family dinner. Her brothers had simultaneously cringed at their mother’s behaviour and done nothing to intervene, relieved at having dodged the hex themselves.

When Ginny had received her first maternity-sized Weasley jumper for Christmas, she had lost it. She had made such a scene at home that it had caused her mother to break out in tears, George to fall over laughing and everyone else to forget that Percy had ever been the black sheep of the family.

Things had been very strained and polite for a while after that. Molly had stuck to questions about Ginny’s job, smiling in an odd way while saying things like “that’s very nice, dear”.

The smile on her face had become more and more strained every time Ginny or Harry had brought up the fact that they were just friends. She had still been charmingly sweet towards Harry, of course. But then Harry had suddenly quit his job and moved to Romania to live with Charlie, and finally the pressure had been taken off Ginny for a change.

At least she had been open about her bisexuality all along, and lived close enough to join the family for the occasional Sunday roast, so perhaps she wasn’t such a disappointment after all.

“I don’t know what to do with kids,” Ginny said. “I’m more of a badass aunt sort of character.”

“So am I,” Tonks said. There was something sad about her tone.

“You’re a great mother,” Ginny said, perhaps a bit more emphatically than she had intended. “Teddy’s a happy child and has everything he needs. You’re doing your best. I barely managed to keep a Pygmy Puff alive.”

Tonks gave a sniffled sort of snort. Ginny put a hand on her shoulder and continued, “You can think about it later. Come with me to the Burrow with Teddy. It’ll give your mind a break and maybe help you sort your thoughts out.”

“Are you sure it’ll be alright? We weren’t invited.”

“You know you’re like family and everyone adores Teddy?” Ginny said, trying a little grin. The corner of Tonks’s mouth lifted a little. She gave one last sigh and downed the rest of her tea.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to turn out.”

“I know,” Ginny said. “Now come on. Mum will have dinner waiting for us at the Burrow. And you know how she loves taking out all of our old toys for Teddy to play with.”

***

“Ginny! Come here, give me a hug,” her Mum greeted her, surrounding her in a suffocating embrace as they emerged from the fireplace. “And Tonks and little Teddy! What a lovely surprise.”

She looked between Ginny and Tonks and suddenly smiled in that mysterious way only mothers can smile. Then she turned back to Teddy.

“How are you, my little boy? Have you missed your Auntie Molly?” she said and pinched Teddy’s cheeks. Teddy squealed in pretend-annoyance and shook his head to get away from her clutch.

The rest of the family was in the garden, and Ginny watched Teddy’s hair go vibrant red at the sight of them. She and Tonks knew that Teddy did it on purpose – he was a cheeky little five-year-old who knew just how to make the adults around him fawn over him – but the easy delight of her brothers at the sight of the little boy made her smile. Bill and Fleur were in France for the summer with Victoire, and Charlie and Harry never showed up other than at Christmastime – international Portkeys were expensive – but everyone else was there.

They ate a hearty dinner in the garden. True to her nature, Molly made everyone have second and third servings of everything until their stomachs were bursting. Everyone was in a good mood; Teddy explained all about his recent conquest of the playground slides as they ate. Percy had news about a recent promotion, and George explained that he would be taking some time off work to travel to Mongolia with Luna. She was on the lookout for Gurgling Gnats, and George said he planned to scout for some rare potions ingredients for his products during the trip, although Ginny had a feeling that his agreeing to the trip had more to do with Luna than the ingredients.

During pudding, Molly turned to Tonks, a smile playing on her dimpled face.

“I was worried when Ginny moved in with you, but seeing the both of you now, it almost looks like you’re a little family. I hope Ginny has the sense to be of help to you and Teddy and not always run around chasing criminals as if that’s the only thing that matters.”

“Mum…”

“Ginny’s very helpful,” Tonks said. “Although most of the time she’s busy doing her duty as an Auror.”

“Well, I hope we’ll see you and Teddy at the Burrow more often.”

Ginny felt her ears go red. She dodged Tonks’s eye by digging into another bowl of custard.

When she helped her mother levitate a table inside after dinner, it was her turn to face comments.

“So, I gather that you and Cho…” Molly started.

“We’re no longer together,” Ginny said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course not, dear,” Molly said with surprising compliance. “Not there, Ginny. The table won't fit if you do it like that.” They got through the doorway and Molly continued. “Well, I’m very happy to see that you have found such a good friend to live with,” she said, putting strange emphasis on the word _friend_. “I’ve always liked Tonks.”

“It’s just temporary,” Ginny said. “It’s only until Tonks feels… better and I’ve found a new place to stay. I just haven’t had the chance to look, I’ve been so busy with work.”

“Of course,” Molly said. “Well, there’s no need to rush it, dear. Take your time figuring things out.”

Later, sitting at the edge of the garden, Ginny sighed happily at the sight of her childhood home. She breathed in the sweet scent of summer flowers and for a moment just appreciated not having to run around on work business. She loved her job, but she didn’t take enough time to enjoy little things.

Tonks brought her a steaming cup of strong tea.

“I thought you might need this,” she said. “I gather you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“You’re a goddess,” Ginny said, taking the cup. “Thanks.”

They sat in quiet and drank their tea. Ginny felt her eyelids get heavy; she lay down on the grass, letting the earthy scent fill her nostrils.

“I think I’ll do it.”

“Huh?” Ginny opened a drowsy eye to see Tonks’s thoughtful face close to hers.

“Return to work. I’ll put Teddy into daycare,” Tonks said. “Remus and I had already agreed to put him there twice a week. Another two days won’t matter. Besides, he spends way too much time with just me and other adults. He needs to be around kids his age.

“And, when I was helping Molly levitate the food out, she said she would be more than happy to look after Teddy once or twice a week. Says the place gets much too quiet without you lot making a ruckus,” she added.

“Told you Mum adores Teddy.”

“Yeah,” Tonks said. She looked pleased.

“I think you’re making a good choice for both you and Teddy,” Ginny said. She started to get up. “I want to fly before going home. Are you up for a one-to-one Seeker match?”

Tonks looked uneasy.

“Come on, when’s the last time you’ve been on a broom?” Ginny said.

“You know how clumsy I am,” Tonks said. “It’s been a long enough time that I think I should use Teddy’s kiddie broom just to make sure he still has a mum after this night.”

Ginny snorted loudly. “You will do no such thing. Come on, get your scared arse off the ground. We are going flying.”

“But Teddy—”

“George and Ron are showing Teddy their new products. He’d be annoyed if his mum interrupted him just now.”

Laughing at Tonks’s pouting face, she grabbed her hand and pulled her off the ground.

***

“I can’t believe you genuinely like this,” Tonks said, sniffing at her glass. She raised it to eyelevel to look at the golden-brown liquid inside, frowning.

“It’s quality whisky, how can you not like it?” Ginny said. She wanted to chuckle at Tonks’s grimace.

“I prefer beer. Or anything else,” Tonks said. She summoned a ginger ale from the fridge and poured it into her glass.

“Hey! That was perfectly good the way it was! You have to learn to savour it.”

“Savour it, my arse,” Tonks said and laughed. She looked more relaxed than she had for weeks. Ginny was happy to observe the faint rosiness of alcohol on her cheeks, and her hair had started to recover some of its vibrant tone.

They were back from the Burrow, Teddy had been put to sleep and they were lounging on the sofa in their pyjamas. The wireless played quietly in the background; some rock band as old as Ginny. Tonks wore boxer shorts with a faded band shirt and a woolly throw was wrapped around her shoulders. Her knee touched Ginny’s and Ginny could feel the warmth of it through her red pyjama bottoms.

It felt casual and comfortable – like a home.

Her current home was perhaps an unconventional one, but Ginny just felt happy to be able to feel at ease somewhere.

“You know, about what your Mum said...” Tonks started. “I’ve actually been thinking recently. About how it feels to have you living with me and Teddy.”

The doorbell rang.

“Who the bloody hell can it be at this time?” Tonks said. “Thank god I Silenced Teddy’s door.”

“I’ll get it,” Ginny said and bounced off the sofa.

When she opened the door she almost didn’t see the courier from the enormous bouquet of green roses he was holding.

“Delivery for Ms Weasley,” the courier’s muffled voice said from behind the roses. “Now if you could just please grab these while I get you to sign here.”

For the briefest of moments, Ginny thought that Emerald Rose himself had figured out where she lived and sent her flowers. Her involvement with the case had been advertised well enough in the tabloids. Then she saw the note attached to the bouquet and wanted to roll her eyes. _If you don’t fetch your broom soon, I might have to put it into questionable places. - Pansy_.

“Who was it?” she heard Tonks say from the sofa after she pushed the door shut and started to wander back into the living room. “Oh. What are those?”

“Just Parkinson playing a joke,” Ginny said. She placed the flowers onto the coffee table. She didn’t know if she wanted to bother with a vase; she didn’t care much for flowers. Then again, she couldn’t just throw them away.

“Parkinson?”

“Pansy Parkinson. Pansy Malfoy, I mean. I keep forgetting she’s changed her surname.”

“And she sent you flowers because…?”

“Because she has an odd sense of humour,” Ginny said. “I don’t know. I’ve been seeing her because of the case I’m currently on. Maybe she just wanted to show her gratitude or something, although I highly doubt she knows what that feeling even is.”

Tonks went quiet. Ginny could sense an odd change in the atmosphere, although she couldn’t understand why. After a moment, Tonks spoke.

“Seeing or _seeing_?”

“What?”

“Are you seeing this Parkinson?”

Ginny gave something of an awkward laugh. “Well, she’s married to Malfoy. It’s not like I’ll be asking her out on a date anytime soon.”

She didn’t know why she didn’t want to talk about Pansy to Tonks. She had shared everything about her relationship with Cho; Tonks had been irreplaceable in her support during the break-up. Perhaps it was just how wrong it was. Although she wouldn’t do something like that herself, Tonks could understand getting involved with a married woman. But she wouldn’t understand seducing someone for the sake of a case.

Not liking the pensive look on Tonks’s face, Ginny changed the subject. “What were you about to tell me before the doorbell rang?”

“Oh, that. I don’t remember anymore, I’m sure it was nothing important,” Tonks said. “Look, I’m heading to bed. I shouldn’t be boozing on a work night anyway, it’s enough of a struggle to stay up in the office without having drunk whisky the night before.”

“I find that work is often better when you’re in the habit of drinking whisky,” Ginny said. She smiled but Tonks didn’t rise to the bate. She just looked tired again.

“I have to take Teddy to Remus’s in the morning. It’s already late enough,” she said. She placed her glass onto the coffee table and got up from the sofa. “Good night, Gin.”

“‘Night,” Ginny said.

She watched Tonks’s receding frame in the orange light of the floor lamp. A second later she could hear the creaking of the stairs.

Something had changed the atmosphere, but Ginny didn’t know what. She gave another look at the enormous bouquet on the table, and with a sigh, got up to get something to put them in. Neither Tonks or she owned anything akin to a vase, although Andromeda had apparently tried to gift Tonks several while she was still alive. Andromeda had died three years ago, and after some sentimental perusal through her belongings, Tonks had chosen to be practical and sell all the glass vases, porcelain creatures and other ornamental objects.

Ginny took an empty glass jar from the cupboard and stuffed the flowers in it. The result looked sloppy, but she couldn’t care less.

After a sleepless night and a day of socializing, she should have been tired by now. But she was full of that restless energy that came from having had the day off. She slumped onto the chair in front of her desk and began to run through the crimes ones more.

So far, what connected the victims of the thefts was that they had all been from Slytherin. No, that wasn’t strictly true. Ginny was just drawing assumptions based on the most recent crimes. There had been other houses as well; and Patrick Fawley had been a Ravenclaw although Ginny didn’t know how he fit into the picture yet.

One thing was for sure: all the victims had been of wizarding descent. And they weren’t just from any descent. They all represented old wizarding families with old money.

Ginny had no illusions as to Malfoy being some kind of modern day Robin Hood. The reason he was targeting old pureblood witches and wizards was more likely to do with reputation or some statement he wanted to make.

_“We recently renovated too.”_ Mr Borgin’s regretful words suddenly popped into her mind..

A new thought came Ginny’s mind and suddenly she was overcome by such excitement that she almost couldn’t stop her hands from shaking as she grabbed a quill and parchment. She wrote a hasty note, hoping that Dennis was in the office despite the late hour on a Sunday night and could check her theory for her.

She drummed her fingers impatiently on her desk as she waited for a response. Feeling restless, she went into the kitchen and poured herself another shot of whisky.

The alcohol did nothing to calm her down. She sat back down at her desk and tried to distract herself by updating her notes for the report that would be due after the case was solved. Finally, after some minutes of reorganizing papers on her desk, she heard a tap on the window.

A handsome large Ministry owl hovered outside. It flew off after Ginny untied the letter attached to its leg.

Ginny’s eyes scanned the contents eagerly.

_Sir Shafiq's private exhibition – renovated by Malfoy Design Solutions (current Snake Studio) two months prior to theft_  
Nott Manor Vault – study containing the vault renovated by Snake Studio two weeks  
prior to theft  
Mrs. Violetta Bulstrode's library – renovated by Snake Studio over the summer  
preceding the theft  
Travers Antique Store – renovated by Snake Studio one month prior to theft  
Borgin and Burkes – renovated by Snake Studio six weeks prior to theft 

Ginny wanted to yelp in victory but restrained herself because of Teddy and Tonks. She didn’t stop herself from pumping the air with her fist, however. The list was all too consistent to be a coincidence. It appeared that Malfoy was definitely not off the hook.

The discovery felt like the first big breakthrough in the case. Ginny tipped the rest of her whisky down her throat and let her mouth spread to a grin. She didn’t know the details, but it didn’t matter. All she knew was that somehow in the services provided by his studio Malfoy had ensured a way for Emerald Rose to get in and out of places unnoticed.

Tomorrow, she would pay a visit to Snake Studio.


	5. Monday

Ginny glanced at her watch for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning. She had taken an early Portkey to wizarding Edinburgh, and with some shaky map-reading and a few ‘Point me’s found her way to Vertic Alley. She was now stationed in the shade of the opposite building in the narrow cobblestone street, sipping her third coffee of the day. She wore a simple Glamour and her robes were spelled black.

Snake Studio stared at her with its modern window and minimalistic logo. The small architecture office opened its doors at nine, but Ginny had been there much too early, restless and eager to get to work after her realization the previous night.

When she finally saw a smartly dressed witch lift the wards on the door and enter the studio, she waited a few more minutes and followed suite.

The waiting room was small and neat. The witch she had seen enter had disappeared somewhere into the offices; the reception was empty. Ginny grabbed a leaflet – _Snake Studio has sophisticated solutions for your stylish space!_ – and sat down on the trendy if slightly uncomfortable chairs.

The leaflet had examples of the services they offered and success stories with voluptuous praise from past clients. There was a short description of the history of the studio, and a longer one about Draco Malfoy, visionary and lover of design. The final page of the leaflet featured a small description of all the designers and architects employed by the studio.

The first photo on the page stopped her. Pansy waved at her from the picture with her signature smirk. Beneath the photo read: _Pansy Malfoy, architect and designer_.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Sorry?” Ginny looked up, almost dropping the leaflet. The woman who had opened the doors stood in front of her.

“May I ask who you have an appointment for?”

“I… Er. It’s for Pansy Malfoy,” Ginny said.

“I’m sorry,” the witch said. “There must have been a misunderstanding. Mrs Malfoy usually works from her office at home and meets her clients there unless otherwise agreed. Do you want me to Floo her?”

“No, that’s not necessary! I might have remembered wrong.”

She dug her cloak pocked for any random scrap of paper. Finding one and pulling it out, she found it to be an old receipt for the liquor store. She pretended to inspect it. “Oh, it appears that my appointment is actually tomorrow, and at Malfoy Manor. I remembered both the time and place wrong. How careless of me!”

She laughed awkwardly at the witch, hoping to pass under her critical eye as some ditzy client still recovering from a long weekend.

Once she was back on the cobblestone street, she headed back towards the Portkey station. It would be of no use to linger in Scotland when she had missed her chance to scour the studio for clues. Snake Studio hadn’t been the kind of place to just march in, but that didn’t matter. If it came down to it, she would get a search permit from Shacklebolt and return with a team of Aurors.

Her investigation had been cut short, but luckily she hadn’t left empty handed. She had research to do.

***

Ginny almost ran into the Archives when she got to the Department. Her hands trembled when she found the correct file.

Pansy Malfoy née Parkinson. A wizarding university in the south of France, majoring in Architecture and Design, minoring in Arithmancy. Apprenticeship in architecture after university. Currently employed by Snake Studio, a small architecture company located in Edinburgh.

She slammed the file back into the shelf. For some reason, she felt cheated. It wasn’t as if Pansy had ever said she didn’t have a job, but Ginny felt that it had been _implied_. How else would she have time to loiter about in her expensive dresses and jewellery, smoking fags and talking shit?

A new possibility came to her mind, one that she hadn’t considered before and felt reluctant to consider.

Pansy could be Emerald Rose. Ginny wanted to dismiss the theory right away. It didn’t make any sense.  
Why would she intentionally tip Ginny off about Borgin and Burkes if she was behind the crimes?

Furthermore, what could be her motive?

Pansy was ridiculously rich. As Malfoy’s wife she lived in one of the most esteemed Manors of Britain and had access to anything she wanted. She would be the sole inheritor of the Parkinson fortune when her parents passed away. Was she playing games just for fun?

Ginny shook her head. Malfoy was still the likelier suspect; perhaps Pansy’s job was what had originally tipped her off on what her husband was doing. Or perhaps she had been ordered by Malfoy to include ways for him to move as Emerald Rose in her work. Maybe she was trying to get out of helping Malfoy without exposing her involvement in the process.

Ginny knew her ideas were just ideas at this point. She couldn’t say anything for sure before she had found out more.

A memo floated into her hand and Ginny folded open the crease.

_Auror Weasley, meet me in my office as soon as is convenient. - Shacklebolt_

***

Cormac and for some incomprehensible reason, Michael Corner, were in Shacklebolt’s office when she got there. The latter watched Ginny with some amusement in his eyes. Ginny saw his eyes trail her up and down, landing on her arse. She regretted leaving her cloak inside her office.

“Sit down, Auror Weasley.”

Ginny took the seat in front of Shacklebolt’s mahogany desk. It was odd to see him seated behind it; while he was supposed to be the main strategist for the Department, he spent most of his time involved in casework. He looked serious and official in his office robes.

“It has come to my attention that you have broken several laws last night in breaking into a muggle art gallery in London and in travelling through muggle areas.”

Ginny’s heart dropped into her stomach. She should have known this would be coming, but she had always been so lucky with her rule-bending to usually get away with a simple warning.

“A group of muggles is reported to have seen you conjure a helmet out of thin air. It was well that they were inebriated. The Obliviators didn’t have to use the strongest memory spells on them,” Kingsley said. “The gallery also reported in a muggle newspaper today that they swore one of their sculptures had overgone small changes overnight. Their surveillance cameras had experienced a mysterious failure so they had no footage to confirm this. Luckily, when the artist was invited to inspect her artwork, she hadn’t noticed any difference.”

Ginny thought about how the dildos had swayed when she had pushed over the penis sculpture and she wanted to snort out loud. The gallery staff were very perceptive if they had noticed anything wrong with the so-called masterpiece. It hadn’t exactly appeared the result of precise work when she had seen it.

“What do you have to say to explain yourself?”

“I was in the gallery on a stake-out. I had good reason to believe it was what Emerald Rose would target next,” Ginny said. She tried to remain calm. “Now, I realize that the tip I received was misleading.”

“And you chose not to inform your partner or the Department because…?”

“Auror McLaggen doesn’t share my opinion on the suspect. I thought it would be more efficient to just do my job than to try to convince him.”

Ginny knew Shacklebolt wouldn’t care for her explanations. Her words were directed at Cormac, that traitor. If only he had done his share of work they could have been further along the case by now and perhaps nothing like the failure of a stakeout would have happened.

“It goes against basic Auror guidelines to act on your own. The main reason Aurors work in partners is not, as is commonly believed, the safety of the Aurors. It is to stop single-minded fools from acting on their stupidity,” Shacklebolt said. His voice was even and calm; it was even scarier than it would have been to hear him yelling. “Your partner claims you insist that Malfoy is behind the crimes with no solid evidence.”

“I have evidence! I’m just putting together my statement against him. I just need a few more days.”

“Malfoy was in his home office all night last night, witnessed by one of his house-elves.”

“Was the elf in question called Bibby, by any chance?” Ginny said, defeatedly. It appeared that Cormac had made his case to Shacklebolt well.

“Yes, she was,” Shacklebolt said. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with it.”

_Bibby would probably lick the dirt off Malfoy’s boots if she could_ , Ginny thought. Unless threatened, she would do what she could to protect her master. Ginny sighed but didn’t say anything.

“Weasley. You’re suspended from your duties for a week,” Kingsley said.

“But—”

“No buts. Hand over your badge,” Kingsley said, extending a beefy arm. “And make sure nothing so reckless happens again.”

Reluctantly, Ginny unpinned her Auror badge from her robes. She made the mistake of looking at Michael Corner and saw an irritatingly smug face there.

“Auror Corner, you will continue investigating the case with Auror McLaggen until Auror Weasley’s return,” Kingsley said.

“What? No!” Ginny said. “You can’t let him have my case!”

“I can and I will,” Shacklebolt said matter-of-factly. “Show me you are capable of restraining your recklessness and making informed decisions and you will be back on the case in no time.”

As if to worsen her misery, Michael opened his stupid mouth and said, “We found out from Ms Carrow there may have been a suspicious looking tall man with a mustache loitering near the gallery on the night of the murder. Funny that you seem to have missed such an important clue.”

“The complete idiocy you just said doesn’t even deserve a response,” Ginny muttered. On her way out, she turned to the two men and pinned Cormac with a sharp look. “At least do yourselves a favour and search Snake Studio. They have something to do with Emerald Rose.”

***

How Ginny ended up at Hog’s Head that evening was a complete mystery to her. At that point, she had at least five pints in her, and her memories of the night consisted mostly of staring into the bottom of a glass of Odgens.

She had had the sense to remove and shrink her Auror robes when she had left the Ministry, but that was where her sense had ended. The rest of the night she had kept the drinks coming and the self-pity high. She was such an Auror cliché at this point that it was getting ridiculous.

Ginny had always considered herself something of a rebel, but getting called out by her boss felt like a blow. She tried not to think about Cormac and Michael but failed miserably. The two would make an absolute mess of the case. Emerald Rose could empty Gringotts itself before either of them would start suspecting the right person.

It was her case. It was the case she had wanted ever since the disappearance of the vase at Travers Antique Store.

She was more limited in what she could do without the comfortable authority of her Auror robes, but Ginny would not give up on her investigations.

She realized she had hit the bar table with her fist in her excitement, and sheepishly pulled her hand away when a few looks were sent her way. Realizing she had spend enough time moping, Ginny tipped the rest of her beer into her mouth and staggered into the fireplace.

At home, Ginny could hear Tonks’s soft murmur from upstairs; Tonks was probably reading him his bedtime story. Suddenly embarrassed, she tiptoed into her room. She knew she had a Sober-Up Potion somewhere. She shouldn’t have come home drunk.

While looking for the potion, her eyes landed on the fat pile of files she had taken from Cormac to give back to Malfoy. There was one thing she could do for the case, and she could do it now. She grabbed a parchment and quill.

When she was done, she performed a quick spell-check charm on her letter to counteract any drunken mistakes, and once she was satisfied, she went to the backyard to find Tonks’s owl to send it.

_  
Dear Percy,_

_I hope you’re doing well. I don’t assume anything new had come up after last Sunday, so I’ll just get straight to the point._

_I’ve attached (shrunk and Feather-Lighted) the business accounts from the past few years of an unnamed individual well-known in wizarding society._

_You wouldn’t mind looking over them for me? There’s supposed to be something wrong with them, but as you know, it’s not my area of expertise. Suspicious large payments, tax evasion, anything of that sort._

_It’s kind of top secret and for work, so please don’t talk about this to anyway. I’ll owe you one._

_Cheers,_  
Ginny  


Happy with her efforts, Ginny clambered into her bed and disappeared into the stack of blankets and pillows. Soon enough, she was snoring.


	6. Tuesday

“Morning Teddy, morning Tonks,” Ginny croaked as she wandered into the small dining alcove of their home. If there had been anything good about her suspension, it was that she had finally gotten a good night’s sleep. Her workday had ended so early and abruptly that despite drinking more than what was healthy for her, she had still gone to bed earlier than on most nights. It was an ungodly hour to be awake, but Ginny felt refreshed not having to rush to the office first thing in the morning.

“You received an owl,” Tonks said, pointing at a flat package at the end of the table.

Ginny didn’t have to open it to recognize it as the accounts she had sent Percy. A note was Spello-taped to the top of the package.

The note was lengthy, true to her brother’s style. Ginny skimmed it over, trying to get to the relevant parts quickly. _I very much enjoyed the work you sent me last night. I couldn’t put it down all night, I even had to postpone reading the most recent number of Cauldron Bottoms Monthly that had arrived when I got home…_ There was a lot more about his work process, and a description about his recent most fortunate bulk purchase of quills, but once she had reached the end of it, she was almost shaking from anger.

How much had it taken Malfoy to pay Cormac off? And how could Cormac have been so selfish?

The final lines of the letter, where Percy finally got to discussing his findings, said: _I have found several discrepancies in the accounts you presented. The character Fawley appears regularly and I suspect this figure has been used as the intermediary to transfer funds out of the business. Some payments also appear to connect to businesses that after further research have little to do with the operation of an art gallery. Beware that some of these may be fake businesses created for the purpose of money laundering._

Ginny got up from her chair abruptly. She gulped down a mouthful of scalding hot coffee and shoved her wand into her front pocket.

“I have to go,” she said.

“You didn’t even have breakfast,” Tonks said.

“I’ll have some later! Save me some toast,” Ginny said. She almost ran to the backyard.

***

When no-one was immediately there to open the door, Ginny thought a miracle had happened and she had happened to call on the one day in his life when Cormac had gone to work on time. But then she heard muffled footsteps and the bright blue door opened, revealing her partner.

“What are you doing here?” Cormac said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He looked like he had just woken up. A dark-red towel was wrapped around his waist; otherwise he was naked.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Ginny said, eyes fixed to his face. “It’s Tuesday. You should be at work.”

“Yes, and it’s barely nine,” Cormac grumbled. “If you’ve come to beg me to put in a word for you for Shacklebolt, you should have at least brought a coffee. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed.”

Ginny heard shuffling inside the house, and a vaguely familiar female voice speak. “Cormac? Everything alright?”

She peeked past him into his house but didn’t see anyone. She had heard enough to set her Auror’s instinct off, however.

“Who’s in there?” she said, trying to step past Cormac to see better. “I know her.”

“None of your business,” Cormac said. He changed his posture to block the doorway better.

“It’s Daphne that’s in there, isn’t it? So, is it Daphne who’s paying you to shut up about Malfoy’s dodgy business deals, then?” she said, taking a step back. The words dripped from her mouth like poison, and she relished seeing the growing panic on Cormac’s face. “No, wait. Daphne doesn’t even have to pay you, because you’re ready to do anything she asks at the bat of her eyelash! I bet Malfoy’s pleased that he sorted the whole thing out so easily.”

“Shut up,” Cormac hissed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do realize that Daphne is probably being paid by Malfoy to keep you happy?”

“Weasley. If you don’t shut up now, I promise you you’ll regret it,” Cormac said.

“I’ll shut up after you’ve explained yourself,” Ginny said, but she did lower her voice slightly. “You knew all along that Malfoy was dealing in suspicious business! How could you let it slide?”

“If you knew what you were talking about, you would do the same thing.”

“Well, explain it to me then,” Ginny said. She probably looked like her mother; her face was flushed from anger and her hands severely at her hips. She lowered her hands so as to appear even a bit calmer.

“Look, whatever reason Malfoy had to have Fawley murdered doesn’t matter. This is much bigger than Malfoy. If we poke too far, we might end up in the middle of it, and get killed or—”

“So you do admit that Malfoy’s behind it!”

“No, or maybe I do, but it doesn’t matter! The point is, there’s too many of them for us to do anything about it. We’ll never catch all of them, they’re too well organized for that.”

“And how do they never get caught? It’s because of people like you! People inside the Auror Department that are easy to bribe to look the other way when needed! You sicken me, McLaggen.”

With that, she turned around back to the street and walked away.

“Ginny, wait!”

Cormac ran after her to the street. He had thrown on a dressing gown but was still mostly naked. A lady from a neighboring yard arched her neck to see what the ruckus was about. A newspaper lay in her lap untouched.

Ginny spun around. She would give Cormac exactly ten seconds. Then she would march to the Ministry and find Shacklebolt, no matter that she was currently suspended.

“Ginny, you don’t know what you’re up against. It’s not just Malfoy and his friends,” Cormac said. He panted slightly from the run. “They’re everywhere. Some of the most powerful wizards of Britain… Not only do they have wealth, they have Dark objects one can only dream of. You don’t want to end up on their bad side.”

“What the hell are you talking about, McLaggen?”

Cormac lowered his voice so that it was barely a murmur. “I don’t know what they’re called. But I know they’ve been around for decades, long before the two wars. They have members in all the big companies, and I don’t even want to guess the amount of people they have in the Ministry. They essentially control all wizarding markets in Britain.”

“Are you saying that Malfoy is part of some...mafia?” Ginny said, frowning.

“Something like that.” Cormac’s face was dead-serious.

“Oh, please,” Ginny said with a snort.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how You-Know-Who gained such a following so quickly? It wasn’t about blood purity, not for most of the people involved. It was about business. Business and blackmail and threats.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not. I just want you to leave me out of it. You didn’t hear this from me,” Cormac said before he turned to go back. “If you have any sense, you won’t go poking around in Malfoy’s business anymore.”

***

Ginny played with the idea of going to the Ministry with Cormac’s treacherousness, but knew deep inside that she wouldn’t be telling Shacklebolt anything before she knew more. She thought about Cormac’s words in deep contemplation as she walked down the street, barely aware of her surroundings.

When she did end up Apparating, it was to a familiar black steel gate. She walked up to the Manor.

“Draco’s not home.”

Pansy stood at the door. She was dressed in a blood-red suit with a feminine cut that accentuated her cleavage. This was the first time Ginny had seen her in anything akin to office clothes; perhaps she did work after all.

“Oh,” Ginny said. “Well tell him I need to talk to him. Or you know what, I’ll just owl him.”

A part of her cursed herself for not thinking of a good reason to stay. She should have come with a plan. She turned to leave but heard a voice behind her.

“Why don’t you just leave a note for him? You can come inside, I’ll find you some parchment.”

Pansy waited for her, and they walked inside side by side. The air was thick with tension; Ginny wondered what Pansy was thinking about as they entered the familiar parlour together.

The room looked strange and still in the early afternoon, small particles of dust glistening in the rays of sunlight.

“Before I forget, here’s your broom.”

Pansy fetched something from the corner of the room and placed it in Ginny’s hand.

“I hope you don’t mind me shrinking it,” she said as their hands touched.

“It’s fine. It’s my old broom.”

The words almost stuck to her throat. Pansy was so close to her again, that playful curve of her smile inches from her lips. She leaned in.

Ginny’s body made its decision in the fraction of a second between their lips touching and her mind catching up. She melted into the kiss, fueled by the electric feeling passing through her veins. She grabbed Pansy by the shoulders and pushed her against the nearest wall.

Merlin, she wanted her. She had to think about the case, to think about how she could get Pansy to talk about Malfoy, but she couldn’t focus, not when Pansy was kissing her like this. Desperately. Hungrily.

“Why?” Ginny said, pulling apart again for air. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” Pansy said, stopping to smile wickedly, “I’m bored.”

Her lips were puffy and her face flushed, and yet she looked much too collected for someone who had just been kissed the life out of.

“And because...” She brought her lips to Ginny’s ear, her breath teasing, “I want you.”

“Come,” Pansy said and took Ginny’s hand. She led her through the complex maze that was Malfoy Manor into a room on the second floor.

It was decorated with softer colours than the rest of the manor, but Ginny didn’t care about the design of the room. Her eyes were pinned to the bed in the middle of the far wall.

The bed was wide; _wide enough for Pansy and Malfoy to sleep apart_ , Ginny thought and immediately regretted thinking about Malfoy. If she was going to go through with this, she would have to forget that Malfoy even existed.

Ginny knew she would regret this. She could still turn back.

She had no illusions about her morals. She had left Dean for Harry, breaking his heart in front of everybody in the Common Room. She had started fucking Mandy while she and Harry had been on a break, but it had nonetheless upset Harry when he had heard. And she had started fucking Harry’s ex soon after.

Now, she was about to have an affair with a married woman.

Pansy raised an eyebrow as if to say, “You think I haven’t done worse in my marital bed?” and Ginny let her cloak drop to the floor.

Pansy undressed slowly in front of her. Ginny mirrored her movements, stripping off her trousers and black t-shirt, never taking her eyes off Pansy. When Pansy sat down on the edge of the bed in just her crimson lace bra and knickers, Ginny approached her.

She pushed her gently to the bed and climbed on top of her, running her fingernails against Pansy’s skin. Pansy’s breath hitched at the contact, and Ginny pinned her to the bed, shoving a thigh between her legs. She enjoyed the look on Pansy’s face when she realized she couldn’t move. It was heated, with a gleam of challenge in her eyes. Ginny could feel the wetness of her knickers against her thigh.

She lowered herself down, leaving kisses and bites along Pansy’s body. She lingered at a nipple, squeezing the sensitive flesh between her teeth and her tongue. Pansy shivered beneath her, and it sent a new flush of heat between Ginny’s legs.

Ginny pulled Pansy’s knickers down and kicked off her own. Pansy was impeccably shaven; her skin was smooth and hairless except for a trail of black hair pointing between her legs like an arrow that said, “go here”. Ginny took in the sight before dipping her tongue into the silky wetness. She took her time teasing Pansy with just her mouth before Pansy grabbed her hair and said with a breathless voice, “Get on with it.”

Ginny laughed. She slipped a hand between Pansy’s legs and started fingering her while sucking and licking her clit. Pansy’s panting increased with every lick, encouraging Ginny and fueling her arousal.

Suddenly Pansy pushed her head away. She Summoned a box from somewhere in the room and spelled it open, and Ginny gasped at the contents. It was full of sex toys of varying colour and size.

“Naughty, much?” Ginny asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Everyone has their little secrets. Mine is that I like to play,” Pansy said. She took out a pink double-ended dildo and a strap-on and threw them to the bed. “I want you to fuck me.”

The words had an instant effect on Ginny. Her body shook with excitement. She fumbled a little while putting on the strap-on. The other end slipped between her legs easily; she had never been so wet. When she was done, Pansy pulled her back against her.

Her dark eyes stared into Ginny’s with desire. The way they fluttered closed and back open when Ginny pushed inside her made the moment almost vulnerable.

She started slowly but picked up the pace soon. Pansy’s moans mingled with the slapping of their body’s together, but Ginny had trouble concentrating when with every thrust she was getting closer and closer to coming herself.

Pansy’s back arched; her body went tense and she gripped Ginny’s back as she came, her nails scratching Ginny’s skin.

It was the final thing that tipped Ginny over the edge and she came with a scream.

They lay in the bed afterward, sticky from sweat. They didn’t speak; Pansy trailed Ginny’s face with her fingers, the expression on her face surprisingly serious. She gave Ginny a small kiss before getting up and starting to dress.

Ginny hastily picked up her clothes and started to get dressed as well. Her underwear was on the bed, but where had she dropped her trousers...

“Look, I—” Pansy started. “I need to talk to you. Somewhere private. Not here, one of the house-elves could be listening—”

The door opened. Ginny looked up, just having closed the first clasp of her cloak.

“Pansy, are you in there?”

It was Malfoy. He had an outdoor cloak on; he must have just come home. The room reeked of sex. There was no way Malfoy would not put two and two together.

“Oh. Auror Weasley,” Malfoy said. “Interesting to see you here.”

He looked between them for a tense moment, but then shrugged. Ginny observed that he looked even more tired than during the last time they had met. Perhaps the investigation was taking its toll on him.

“I needed to talk to you about the case,” Ginny said. “When you weren’t home, your wife kindly asked me to stay.”

“I hope she was _kind_ enough to offer you some tea, at least,” Malfoy said. Ginny thought she saw a mean glint in his eye, but she could have imagined it. “Anyway, I’m too busy to talk today.”

He turned to Pansy. She was seated at the edge of the bed and looked bored.

“Pansy, I’m gone tonight because of work. I’ll be back in the morning. Look after the house.”

Pansy nodded. Ginny noticed there was a love bite on her neck; she hoped it wasn’t visible from the doorway.

“I need to be on my way anyway,” Malfoy said. “Auror Weasley, owl me if there’s any development in the case.”

When he had left, Ginny finished buttoning down her cloak and turned to say goodbye to Pansy.

“Ginny, don’t go.”

“But Malfoy—” She had thought of following him. It was probably too late now, anyway. He could have already made it to the Floo.

“He’s gone. Come on, at least have a drink with me before you leave. We can go to my office, it’s warded.”

On the way to her office, Ginny tried to focus on her task again.

“Where’s Malfoy headed tonight?”

“Oh, who knows,” Pansy said. “He’s always off on some business or another.”

Ginny thought there was an airiness to her voice that didn’t quite seem genuine.

Pansy’s office resided in the opposite end of the hallway the bedroom was on. It was a comfortable room with large windows and a white, glossy desk. Ginny looked around in barely-hidden curiosity. Up until now, she hadn’t seen much of anything that screamed Pansy Parkinson in Malfoy Manor. The Manor was filled with antiques and old heirlooms that had probably not changed place for several decades.

The walls of the office were a crisp white. One wall was covered in a large noticeboard; off it hung several technical-looking drawings. The shelves of a large, white bookcase hosted some books on design, several pink binders and a wooden model of a building. Pink stationery was neatly placed onto the desk, and there was also a vase of fresh roses, pink, not green. The only sign of recent work were some papers and folders that were scattered on the desk.

“You haven’t asked me what I do.”

Pansy knelt behind the desk and pulled out a glass bottle and two wide glasses.

“You’re an architect,” Ginny said.

“You did your background check well, then,” Pansy said, amusement in her voice. “Here.”

She passed her one of the glasses. Ginny watched her sip her own drink and did the same. It was sherry, and Ginny wrinkled her nose a bit when the sweetness hit her tongue. She prefered smokier flavours. In the momentary quiet, she tried to think of a way to ask Pansy about her work.

“We’re working for our biggest client as of yet,” Pansy said, as if reading her thoughts. She nodded at the stack of papers on her desk. “You may have heard of it, since you work at the Ministry. The construction works have been going on for a few weeks. Would you like to see?”

She placed her glass on the desk and took one of the sheets of paper. It was a blueprint and looked very professional. Ginny couldn’t make out much at a glance, but she spotted the logo of Snake Studio in the corner of the sheet.

“These are highly confidential, of course,” Pansy said. “I may have to punish you for seeing them.”

“Oh?” Ginny said, suddenly hopeful.

“I can also take sexual favours as form of payment,” she said, giving Ginny a sly grin.

“I can comply,” Ginny said, feeling a new rush of desire fill her. It was ridiculous, when they had just fucked. Pansy, however turned back to her papers on the desk.

“Starting with the Portkey Office, we are going to bring the Ministry to the modern age,” Pansy said. “We’ve made some major adjustments, true to our style.”

Ginny froze. It was as if Pansy was trying to deliberately tell her something about Malfoy similarly to Saturday.

“What sort of adjustments?”

“My husband has his visions about the business,” Pansy said. “He’s not an architect, of course, so I ensure his plans are put to motion.”

“And do you want to?” Ginny asked carefully.

“My life’s always been laid out for me.”

Pansy lit a fag. She sat like that, quiet, smoke trailing from the end of her cigarette for a minute. “Some people think it was all over when the Dark Lord died. But that’s not true. It’s never been over for us. Some of us are still playing the game.”

Ginny was offended at the use of the words ‘game’ in something that had cost the lives of hundreds of witches, wizards and muggles, but she felt that this was not a moment to bring it up. She waited for Pansy to continue.

“My husband’s one of them,” Pansy said. “Stupid, foolish Draco. He’s never been able to keep himself away from where the big money’s at. He’s off again tonight, sticking his head further into something he should have never started.”

_Tonight?_ Had Pansy just said what she heard?

“They’ll kill him,” Pansy said, suddenly sounding horrible. She had a hollow look in her eyes as she took a puff of her cigarette. “Draco’s not a popular person right now because of the whole Fawley business. Half of them think he’s done it, and they’re stupid. The other half are smart enough to think it’s someone with a grudge against Draco. But it’ll only be a matter of time when they no longer care whether he did it. He’s caused enough damage to everyone for it to not matter.

“At this point, I’m just relieved if the Aurors get behind everything,” Pansy said. “I’m sick of the games. I’m sick of being a pawn. I just want to be free.”

_She’s bluffing,_ Ginny thought. _She has to be bluffing._

But Cormac had talked about the same thing, about large-scale organized crime. It didn’t seem so unbelievable now. She still didn’t know what Malfoy was doing going around stealing as Emerald Rose, but Ginny figured it had to have something to do with the mafia. Perhaps even Pansy didn’t know the details.

It seemed that now that Pansy had started, she couldn’t stop. Her eyes looked distant and glassy as she spoke. She finished her fag and lit another one.

“What do you think?” she turned to Ginny again, and when her eyes met hers, they were piercing, almost accusing. “What would you do? What would you do if you knew the person closest to you was doing the wrong thing?”

“You tried to warn me about Borgin and Burkes before,” Ginny said. “Why are you helping me?”

“Maybe I want him in Azkaban as much as you do,” Pansy said. A tear came out of her eye and rolled down the curve of her cheek. “Maybe it'll be worse for him if he keeps doing what he does.”

***

“Tonks!”

“It never means anything good when you come home like that,” Tonks joked when Ginny appeared in the living room. Ginny was surprised to find her sitting on the sofa at this time of the evening.

She had hurried home as soon as she could without raising Pansy’s suspicion.

“You’re alone?” she asked Tonks.

“Yeah, Teddy is with Remus tonight. Why?”

“This is going to sound weird, but can we pretend I forgot something in the office and need to borrow your badge to go back and fetch it?”

“Sorry?”

“I can’t get into the office out of hours without my Auror’s badge,” Ginny said somewhat sheepishly.

“Without your—”

“I was suspended. Just for a week. Sorry I didn’t say anything to you,” Ginny said. “Anyway, that’s not important right now. I have to get inside the Ministry. Into your department, actually.”

“You’re suspended and you want to get inside the Ministry?” Tonks said. “Why do I have a feeling this has to do with the case.”

“I know who Emerald Rose is. And he’s going to target the Ministry tonight if I’m not there to stop him.”

She started to Summon various objects from her room and shove them into the enlarged pockets of her cloak. She didn’t know what she would be up against – she wouldn’t put it past Malfoy to use Dark Magic – so she needed whatever she could find to take him by surprise. She took some bottles of George’s Slippery Solution and put in a Diverting Dungbomb just in case.

“Ready to go?” Tonks stood next her, wearing her black work cloak and pink combat boots.

“You’re coming with me?”

“Of course,” Tonks said with a grin.

They entered the fireplace side by side. Ginny felt as if the air crackled with more than just the cold flames of the Floo. She was tense with excitement.

“I have to say, I’m pretty excited to be doing something like this again,” Tonks said. “I hope my reflexes are still what they used to be.” Her grin flashed green in the flames.

“You’re weird,” Ginny said, shaking her head fondly. “But thanks. I appreciate it.”

She threw the powder into the flames and shouted their destination.

***

It was quiet in the Atrium. Only two of the fireplaces that usually let throngs of Ministry employees in were open at this time of night; the rest were blocked with gridded doors.

They saw no-one on the way to the gold entrance gates. Tonks grazed the recognition plate with her badge and the gate led them through with a chiming sound.

Out of some silent agreement, they passed the elevators and took the stairs instead. It was only two flights down to the Department of Magical Transportation. A few lights shined here and there on the doors they passed; there were always a few poor individuals working late at the Ministry.

The whole way down Ginny was on the edge; she nearly jumped when she saw a uniform-clad witch cleaning on the sixth floor near the door to the Department. A spelled mop washed the floor near the door, and the woman was busy washing the windows.

Tonks’s badge got them through the door easily. The cleaning lady stopped her work to hold the door open for them; Ginny and Tonks nodded a thanks as they passed her.

It was eerily quiet in the Department.

Ginny had spent very little time in the the Department of Magical Transportation. It looked different from the few times she had been there; it must have been the renovation work Malfoy’s company had done. There were still some signs of works being done. She could make out wooden pallets stacked with obscure building materials and tools in the little light that came in through the window to the hall.

Remembering Pansy’s words, she headed towards the Portkey Office, Tonks following closely behind her.

She cast a dim Lumos to see her surroundings better. To her right were two secure-looking doors with signs: ‘Portkey Storage Room’ and ‘Production Room - No Entry for Unauthorized Personnel’. Ginny wasn’t entirely sure about the process of Portkey development, but she knew that transportation experts created Portkeys somewhere behind the latter door. It was said to be heavily guarded by wards; the finished Portkeys were delivered to the storage room where they were fetched from by other staff in the Department. The storage room was also guarded, but a standard employee badge was enough to get through that door.

The legislation surrounding Portkeys had tightened in the past few years. International Portkeys had been particularly difficult to obtain after the war. Many of You-Know-Who’s followers had attempted to flee abroad to avoid their trials, and the Ministry had issued a long application process. Portkeys to faraway places were worth a lot. It there was anything Emerald Rose could want from the Department, it would be from the storage room.

Ginny’s eyes found Tonks’s and she nodded at the door. Tonks used her badge again and the lock clicked open. Carefully, Ginny cracked open the door. She half-expected to find Malfoy on the other side, although logically he could be further inside.

There was no-one there.

The storage room reminded Ginny of the Hall of Prophecy she had seen in her fourth year in the Department of Mysteries. It was filled with aisles after aisles of shelves with random muggle litter, each object marked with a small tag that Ginny assumed contained the destination. She realized she had held her breath and let it go. The Portkeys gave off a mild stench, but it wasn’t as bad as she had thought.

They tiptoed through the nearest aisle, and with each new aisle they took Ginny’s tension grew. She decided to risk a word to Tonks and hoped that Malfoy wasn’t somewhere close under a Disillusionment Charm.

“Tonks,” Ginny whispered. “Do you think he could have already been here?”

“I don’t think so,” Tonks murmured back. “The last employee usually leaves at half-seven and checks all the locks and wards. He’d have to have been very fast to get in and out between then and us getting here.”

Ginny tensed suddenly; she thought she had heard something move. She pointed her wand into the darkness.

“Expelliarmus!”

Ginny’s wand flew out of her hand and clattered onto the floor some feet away. She heard Tonks’s do the same.

A woman with a skintight black bodysuit stood in front of them, blocking the nearest aisle to the door. Her wand pointed a sharp light at them. The upper part of her face was covered with a mask. The woman looked between the two of them and Ginny realized she probably hadn’t expected there would be two of them.

“Wait, you’re not McLaggen. Who the hell…” she mumbled. There was something familiar about her voice.

A scent hit Ginny’s nose. Perfume, smoke and a hint of leather from the costume she was wearing. She knew that scent.

The realization hit her like the Knight Bus. Ginny could almost feel the air draw out of her lungs and her body go cold like she’d just had an unpleasant make-out session with a Dementor.

She had been played.

“Pansy,” Ginny hissed. “It was you then, all along.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Pansy said. Her blood-red lips smiled under the mask. She twirled her wand in her gloved hand and an emerald rose in the other. A small rucksack dangled from her left shoulder.

Ginny’s hand found Tonks’s arm. She gave it a what she hoped was an unnoticeable nudge.

“When I say ‘go’, run to the wands. I’ll distract her,” Ginny said under her breath, not looking away from Pansy. To Pansy, she said loudly, “I did suspect you, you know.”

“I bet you didn’t suspect _us_ ,” another voice said from behind her. “Don’t even think about running.”

Ginny didn’t have to turn around to recognize the other witch. Daphne’s soft voice was easy to recognize. They were cornered. _Shit!_ If she didn’t do something soon, it would be too late.

“Thanks for letting us in,” Pansy said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to stun you now. I hope you come up with an explanation for the rose before someone finds you. Otherwise people might suspect foul play at the Ministry.”

It had to be now. Ginny slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out the Dungbomb. She had Quidditch to thank for her quick reflexes. She threw the bomb to the floor, and held her nose, ready to dive run when it hit.

“Now!”

The aisle filled with a dense, stinking smoke. The last thing Ginny saw was Tonks dive to the floor towards their wands and two shadow-figures run towards Daphne. She ran towards Pansy.

“What the fuck—” Pansy coughed loudly, “My eyes!”

Daphne screamed and started throwing spells at random. “Stupefy! Confringo!”

Some of them hit nearby shelves and exploded. Ginny heard something shatter and saw a bright flash from the corned of her eye. She kept heading towards Pansy’s coughing and braced herself for the contact.

She missed Pansy and only grazed her instead of pushing her over.

The smoke from the dungbomb started to vanish, but a small trail of black smoke came from somewhere near.

“Tonks! The shelves!” Ginny yelled. A fire had started where Daphne’s spell had hit; Ginny saw another smaller one in a nearby shelf.

Tonks turned around and started yelling ‘Aguamenti’ at the burning shelves. This gave Pansy and Daphne the chance to run. Ginny tried to grab Daphne as she ran past, but the slick costume had nothing to grab onto.

She looked between their receding figures and Tonks, deciding quickly whether to run after them or not. They had their wands and she didn’t. She hurried to Tonks and snatched her wand, and ran after them.

“Stupefy!”

Ginny ducked the spell Pansy had thrown at her and aimed one back. Her spell missed; they were already close to the door. If they got out, they could use one of the Portkeys to escape.

She sent hot sparks shooting from her wand and heard a scream. She had hit one of them, but it wasn’t enough. When she emerged from behind an aisle, she saw the door close shut.

She got to the door, panting, and tried to open it. It was locked. There were a few drops of blood next to it.

“Alohomora!”

The door didn’t budge. Ginny tried a number of other unlocking spells, but all of them bounced off the handle.

“Fuck, what have they done to it!”

“I don’t know.” Tonks had appeared next to her. She looked a little shaken. She smelled of fire and her face was smeared with soot.

“Pansy must have done something to it. She could have done something during the renovations,” Ginny said. “Is there another way out?”

“There’s no way out except this door,” Tonks said. “The Portkeys are set to not work inside the storage room. And it’s warded against Apparition.”

“Fuck!” Ginny kicked the door out of frustration. It made a dull sound at the impact but didn’t budge.

She slumped against the door and buried her hands in her hair. Tonks sat down next to her.

“Guess we’re stuck here,” she said.

“I wish I hadn’t dragged you along,” Ginny said, groaning. “I’m going to be in one hell of a mess when the Department finds out about all this. They’ll blame you as well. You could lose your job.”

“You didn’t drag me anywhere, I offered to come along,” Tonks said.

Ginny tried a few more spells at the door, but her efforts were futile. As a last, desperate attempt, she sent a Patronus to Cormac.


	7. Epilogue

Later, Draco Malfoy had been arrested for the murder at Poison Gallery and several thefts, including the one at the Department of Magical Transportation. The case against him hadn’t been very strong, but Ginny had given a statement against him, and no-one had testified for him. Several figures in the mafia could have been able to attest that he had in fact been attending a private meeting during the time of the murder, but their hands had been tied if they didn’t want to incriminate themselves as well. Ginny knew it was wrong to condemn an innocent man to prison, but while Draco was perhaps not a killer, he was at least far from innocent.

She thought Pansy would appreciate it; if she genuinely cared for her husband, she could at least sleep her nights in peace knowing he was safe from the vindictive clutches of his peers who were now facing investigation because of ties to his businesses. Malfoy himself would probably kill her when he got out of Azkaban.

Wizarding Britain had begrudgingly accepted Malfoy as Emerald Rose. Much of the mystery was still unexplained, of course, and none of the stolen objects had been found. This had caused wild theories to spread amongst the most devoted fans of the gentleman thief.

Some claimed that the true Emerald Rose was still on the loose, and would appear again once the scandal had subsided a little. Even wilder theories blamed Malfoy’s wife, who had never been seen again since the night of the final crime. But it was more commonly accepted that Pansy Malfoy had just fled the country before the scandal surrounding her husband had had time to erupt to massive proportions.

Ginny, of course, knew better, but she kept her mouth shut.

Daphne Greengrass had been nowhere to be found either. She had last been spotted in Auror McLaggen’s flat, where she had left a sexually frustrated Auror McLaggen magically tied to his bed posts.

In retrospect, Ginny had a feeling that the cleaning witch loitering around the Department of Magical Transportation that neither Tonks or she had recognized had been somewhat suspicious. Her having been a Glamour-charmed Greengrass would have explained a lot.

Cormac, wisely, had decided to transfer to the Department of Intoxicating Substances. Ginny had considered reporting him for his questionable alliances, but had decided against it.

He wasn’t all bad. He just had more human weaknesses than what was perhaps permitted for an Auror. Ginny liked to imagine him in his new position using his charm on inebriated witches and wizards.

There was also the tiny fact that he had saved Ginny from getting fired. The spells on his bed had worn off in the early hours of morning and he had gotten to the Ministry on time to help Ginny and Tonks out before the first employees had started to trickle in. He hadn’t reported Ginny for acting on her own again, and the entire Auror Department was now under the belief that Emerald Rose had gotten into the Portkey Office on his own accord.

Ginny didn’t know why he had suddenly decided to be so nice, but she was silently grateful.

By the time Ginny had gotten out, it had been too late to go after Pansy and Daphne. They had taken such a large amount of Portkeys that it would have been impossible to determine which one they might have used to escape.

Ginny imagined them sipping sickeningly sweet cocktails on the beach somewhere distant and tropical.

Ginny wondered if Pansy was happy, wherever she was now. She had needed a culprit to take the blame for her crimes and she had needed the attention of the mafia off her, and she had gotten both. They would live comfortably off the money from the stolen objects, and if they were ever in need of more… Well, they were master thieves, so Ginny doubted that would be a problem.

And Fawley?

He had been the bait, the final straw that would ensure that Auror attention would be irreversibly brought upon the members of the mafia. No infiltrators of the Department or paid men like McLaggen would have been able to turn investigation off a murder as had been seen.

Technically, Ginny knew that Pansy had had to have been the one to do it. Daphne had had an alibi for the night, and Ginny doubted they would have paid anyone to do it, not when tensions inside the mafia had already been high and trusting someone else with their plan could have caused everything to go wrong for them.

The thought that she had fucked a ruthless killer made her shudder in retrospect.

“What are you thinking about?” Tonks asked.

They were sipping hot drinks on the sofa of Tonks’s house – their home. Tonks held onto a steaming hot chocolate that smelled divine; Ginny had tea with just a splash of whisky.

“Pansy,” Ginny said. “Wondering if she’s enjoying her freedom.”

“Probably,” Tonks said. Ginny had updated her on most details of the case since the night at the Ministry. “Do you blame yourself for her escape?”

“A little bit,” Ginny admitted. “Mostly, I feel stupid for having been so easy to fool.”

Tonks looked at her with an understanding smile. Then, more seriously. “Did you fuck her?”

“I… yeah,” Ginny said. “I did. Do you mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

“Because,” Ginny said, taking a deep breath, “you like me, don’t you? I was an idiot for not noticing it before and you wouldn’t even care if I liked you back at this point, knowing what a horrible person I’ve been. I mean—,” she gave a hollow laugh, “I fucked a married woman just to get information for a case. And even worse, I enjoyed it.

“I’m never at home because I’m too busy at work, and I know you’d like someone who could be a parent to Teddy and I’m rubbish at all the motherly stuff…”

“Ginny,” Tonks interrupted. “I like you, but I don’t _like_ you.”

Ginny stopped to catch her breath. She stared at Tonks with wide eyes.

“What I mean is, I like having you around. Teddy adores you. Hell, his favorite game has been Aurors and Robbers ever since he learned how to run,” Tonks said with the lopsided smile Ginny loved. “Do I want you to keep living with me? Yes. Do I want you around for Teddy and me? Yes. But do I also know that you are extremely busy, and put your job first? Absolutely. And that you are never going to be the settling down type? I think you may want to be, but you’re not ready for it yet.”

Ginny wanted to protest, but Tonks stopped her with a gesture.

“And do I think that maybe we could turn into something more over time?” she continued. Her eyes twinkled, and Ginny swallowed. “Yes. But I think we need to take it one thing at a time.”

“Yeah,” Ginny said. “Yeah. I agree with everything you said. Tonks, I’m sorry about—”

“This is the moment where you shut up and kiss me, you moron,” Tonks said, interrupting her. She brought a hand to Ginny’s neck and Ginny followed her gaze go from Ginny’s eyes to her lips and back up again. More nervous than she thought she’d be, Ginny closed the distance between them and kissed Tonks.

It felt like home.


End file.
